


A Song to Keep Us Warm

by crystalrainwing



Category: Supernatural, The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: (every single one is an unreliable narrator), Angst, Animal Death, Child Abuse, Dimension Travel, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gaslighting, Gen, Hiding Injuries, Hurt/Comfort, ITS ALL ANGST, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Major Character Injury, Medical Inaccuracies, Minor Character Death, No Incest, Platonic Cuddling, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Scars, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt, Survivor Guilt, Tags May Change, Unreliable Narrator, cant promise that its accurate though super sorry, every hargreeves sibling is a jerk and none of them are socially aware, its klaus, its reginald :/, makes me want to kill a man (reginald hargreeves is that man), no beta we die like ben, small children that are rude because they don't know any better, that’s just how it is baby!!, the major character death is Ben, theres noooo romance! no romantic relationships at All, they love each other so much but dont know how to show it... what a disaster, with a little
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-13 07:49:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28899936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crystalrainwing/pseuds/crystalrainwing
Summary: Seven days after buying seven unusual children, Reginald Hargreeves stepped out of his enormous mansion and saw a small basket, containing a small child. He bent down and saw that there was a note resting on the child’s blankets, black ink on white cardstock.He’s special. Keep him safe.Reginald’s purchasing of children had, of course, been kept entirely secret. The most logical explanation to him, then, was that this must be one of the 43.He hired another nanny and set up another bedroom for Number Eight.Or, Jack is adopted into the Hargreeves family.
Relationships: Jack Kline & Ben Hargreeves, Jack Kline & The Hargreeves Family
Comments: 30
Kudos: 34





	1. You Were There

**Author's Note:**

> hello! i wrote this a few months ago and figured i'd post it cause it was just rotting in my google docs. hope you enjoy :)  
> please read the tags!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack’s childhood with the Hargreeves.

On the 12th hour of the first day of October 1989, 43 women around the world gave birth. This was unusual only in the fact that none of these women had been pregnant when the day first began. Sir Reginald Hargreeves, eccentric billionaire and adventurer, resolved to locate and adopt as many of the children as possible.

On the 8th hour of the eighteenth day of May 2017, in an entirely different reality, Kelly Kline gave birth. This was unusual in many ways, but the most visible was the fact that there was no child in the house when she finally fell back, dead. A golden glow faded away, and no living person was there to see it. 

Life would continue forward in Kelly’s world, although without her in it. Eventually, the Winchesters would stop looking for little Jack.  _ Dodged a bullet,  _ they’d say. One meant it truly, while the other could only think that Jack was a child, one they could’ve helped. He must be dead.

He was not dead.

He had simply traveled. 

Seven days after buying seven unusual children, Reginald Hargreeves stepped out of his enormous mansion and saw a small basket, containing a small child. He bent down and saw that there was a note resting on the child’s blankets, black ink on white cardstock. 

_ He’s special. Keep him safe. _

Reginald’s purchasing of children had, of course, been kept entirely secret. The most logical explanation to him, then, was that this one must be one of the 43. 

He hired another nanny and set up another bedroom for Number Eight.

-*-

Number Six and Number Eight were in neighboring rooms, and they quickly became fast friends. Number Eight, Reginald saw, could make impossible shadow puppets which seemed to entertain and fascinate his many brothers and sisters. His abilities were not as clear as the others’. 

Number One showed his at age 2, when he threw a chair in a tantrum before flipping the table they were sitting at. The nanny’s foot was broken by the heavy wood, so Reginald hired a new one, and wrote down  _ Unnatural strength?  _ in a small, red notebook. 

Number Two showed his at age 4, when he threw a ball wildly off target in some game the children were playing, and it suddenly curved directly towards Number Six, hitting him straight on. Reginald wrote  _ Trajectory manipulation?  _

Number Three showed hers at age 3, when she whispered to a child passing by the house, “I heard a rumor that you broke your arm!” The child’s arm was not broken before. She suddenly cried out as the bone snapped. Number Three seemed panicked and quickly said, “I heard a rumor that your arm was okay!” The other child quickly stopped crying as her arm straightened and healed. Reginald scribbled down  _ Reality manipulation through words?  _

Number Four showed his at age 6, when one of his so-called imaginary friends told him that Number Seven didn’t like oatmeal, and she would hurt him if he tried to make her eat.. Reginald tentatively wrote  _ Ability to speak to the dead? _

Number Five showed his at age 2, when he disappeared from his room and the nanny’s reaching hands in a flash of blue light and appeared in Number Six’s room the same way. Reginald wrote  _ Teleportation? _

Number Six showed his at six months, when he began to cry and several small tentacles appeared from his stomach, waving frantically. They slithered over him, patting his face and comforting him, before retreating back to wherever they came from. Reginald wrote down simply  _ Tentacles.  _ He wasn’t sure what else there was to write.

Number Seven showed hers at age 2, when a loud sound caused her to startle, and then several glasses around her exploded. Reginald wrote  _ Telekinesis??  _

Number Eight began to show some at 1 month. Tiny, down-covered wings appeared on his back, disappearing just as quickly. Reginald wrote  _ Flight/winged  _ in his small red notebook. At 6 months, he was dropped by a nanny and broke his tiny arm. He didn’t scream or cry, just stared at it until it healed, with no sign it’d ever been broken except the security tapes. Reginald wrote  _ Healing  _ in his small red notebook. At 3, he got angry at Number One as they were playing, held out his soft hand, and sent waves of golden light that knocked over the bigger boy. Reginald wrote  _ Moving things with energy waves? _

When they were all 4, Number Seven became too dangerous. Reginald had Number Three tell the children that Number Seven had always been ordinary, boring, not worth attention. He’d found that she could use sound waves to cause destruction, and as she got older it became stronger. She was powerful, and must be kept docile. He began to medicate her with a drug concoction that would keep her from using her powers. 

Number Eight seemed to have a hard time forgetting, and had to be told many times. His memory seemed damaged after that… incident. Reginald didn’t mind. His abilities still functioned fine.

-*-

July 3rd, 1993

Jack knew something was missing from his room. It didn’t feel right. The Wrong-ness made him ruffle his feathers with agitation. He could make it right.

He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them the Wrong was gone. One wall had colors, a pretty picture, a big apple tree and a little sun and a rainbow arching over. Some letters were painted in stark white over the rainbow. Some other letters were on the apples. He didn’t know what they meant, but he knew they were letters. Number Six was always trying to show him what they meant.

There was also a nice little bed (a Swedish crib, a voice in the back of his mind supplied), a little like the one he’d slept in when he was very little. He liked it. He wouldn’t be able to get into it to sleep, but that was ok. It just felt right for it to be there.

-*-

January 13, 1996

Number Two hated the tattoo. It  _ hurt,  _ so much, and it was ugly and dark and it would  _ always be there.  _ For the rest of his life. Marking him. 

He could barely register his siblings crying softly around him, not loud enough to be heard over the pounding in his ears.

What he did hear was the sound of Jack crying out in pain and the tattoo guy getting thrown to the floor. His head snapped up in surprise, and there was the littlest brother, sitting on the chair with a tattoo on his wrist and tears in his eyes - before suddenly, the tattoo disappeared. 

Reginald looked at Jack sharply. “Number Eight, if you cannot keep the tattoo on your skin, you will have to be punished.” Number Two shivered at his cold tone. 

Jack started to cry, and it looked like he could barely breathe through his messy tears. But he held still as the scared-looking tattoo guy gave him the little umbrella, and this time it didn’t disappear.

-*-

March 8th, 1997

Number Six was exhausted. His training was so  _ hard.  _ He hated it, and he knew who could make him feel better. He trudged up the stairs to where his room, and Number Five’s, and Jack’s, were. Instead of turning to go to his, Number Six walked through the open door into Jack’s room. The brown-haired boy was spread across his bed, staring at the ceiling. He liked doing that a lot.

“Hi, Jack,” Number Six said, his voice quiet and soft. 

Jack didn’t move. “Hey, Six.” 

Number Six climbed up onto the bed with the smaller boy. “I don’t like training. Dad says that it will make me better, but it just hurts. And They don’t like it.”

Jack turned his head towards Number Six. “I can make you feel better. Reginald says it’s good practice.” He reached out his hand, resting it on Number Six’s aching stomach. His eyes pulsed a pretty gold for a moment before the hurt left. He could feel Them settling down on the other side. They like Jack. 

“He’s not  _ my _ dad. My father is Castiel.”

Number Six loved listening to Jack talk about his father. The stories were even more interesting than the books he reads. And every time is a new story. 

“He has lots of brothers and sisters. Some of them are nice, like you, Six. Some of them are very mean and they hurt him. He’s really good at fighting, too! He has a magic knife that can kill anything. One time he had to fight these monsters called Leviathans…”

Number Six found peace here, with his brother and his stories. 

Number Eight found peace here, with his quiet, dark-haired brother and the creatures that lurked just under Six’s skin.

-*-

February 23, 2002, 8:35 AM

Jack hated training. He hated missions. He hated having to hurt people. 

It was time for his training again.

Reginald called him to a huge, white room. Against one wall several animals were chained, the biggest a bear and the smallest a huge dog. Jack knew what he had to do. He concentrated for a moment, and huge wings, as big as he was tall, appeared. His shirt and jacket got ripped, but he didn’t mind too much. He’d fix them later. 

He strapped on two leather bracelets, each etched with the language Jack doesn’t know the name of. They suppressed his healing powers. Only Reginald (or Mom, though she isn’t his mother) could take them off. He was in another room. He wouldn’t come in while the animals were still alive. Jack could die here. 

“Number Eight, we must improve your time. I expect you to have all of them eliminated within 5 minutes.”

Jack took a deep, shaky breath. Reginald released the animals. They were half-starved and rabid, beyond rational thought. Jack held out his hands, and they all stopped, straining against an invisible force. Jack was trembling and sweating from the effort, his hair falling into his golden-glowing eyes. The bear started moving forwards, slowly, and Jack’s face contorted with pain as he closed his fist. It continued, now just yards from Jack’s vulnerable form. 

Jack made a pained sound, and the dog barked at him. It was the distraction that the animals needed, Jack’s concentration lapsing for a few precious seconds. Instantly, the huge dog was on top of him, tearing at his arms as he tried to defend himself. He let out a piercing scream as light erupted from his body, and when it cleared, none of his attackers were left. There was only Jack, blood quickly spreading from his ruined arms. 

“Good, Number Eight. Your time is down to 3 minutes. I expect we will have to explore this new development further.” The voice came from the speakers lining the room, and Jack could only listen numbly as his head spun. 

The door to the room slammed open, and he felt Mom’s soft yet  _ fake  _ hands gently removing the bracelets. “There, dear, you’ll feel much better now.”

Jack could only gasp in pain as he quickly, so quickly, regrew muscle and skin (maybe even some bone, he couldn’t tell) and his blood replenished. When it was over, he only felt phantom pain. He rubbed at his arms ( _ they shouldn’t feel this way teeth ripped through redredred)  _ and got to his feet. 

With a wave of his hands, his clothes were whole and unbloodied.. He wasn’t sure when his wings had disappeared, but at some point they had. 

“Prepare yourself, Number Eight. We must continue.”

Jack hid a small sob as he let his wings out again, and Mom clipped the bracelets back on his wrists ( _ shouldn’t be whole)  _ and took a deep, shaky breath. 

The door shut with a clang behind Mom as she left.

6:00 PM

It had been Jack’s turn for special training. Dad had come back after a few hours, but like usual, Jack wasn’t back until dinner. He looked shaken. He always looked shaken, these days, but there was never a bruise on him; Diego knew that he couldn’t be hurt. Lucky bastard. His special training couldn’t be that bad. Diego loved his brother. That didn’t stop him from envying Jack. Or, really, Klaus too. 

Diego couldn’t imagine anything worse than being strapped underwater, forced to hold his breath for hours, or having to deflect whatever things Dad wanted to throw at him, or having to throw knives at Mom or Klaus or Luther and make sure that they didn’t hit his family. 

Jack was the sweetest of any of them, really. It made sense that Dad wouldn’t really hurt him. This was the boy who brought the whole family flower crowns, or little bugs he’d found, or drawings he’d made. Hurting him was almost inconceivable.

Diego could see Ben shooting Jack worried looks. The two most gentle, the two most afraid of hurting others with their wild powers; it made sense that they were best friends. If Diego had to pick a best friend from his siblings, he’d probably pick… Klaus. The two of them got along pretty well. It wasn’t as good as what Ben and Jack had. They deserved it. 

That didn’t mean he wasn’t jealous. 

-*-

January 11th, 2003

Number Five had been gone for a month. Ben knew that if he wasn’t home by now, he probably wasn’t coming back. 

Jack crept into his room late that night. He and Ben had always known, somehow, when the other had something to say that was too important to wait, so Ben had been waiting for his brother patiently.

“I’m going to, um, going to find Five. I’m going to bring him home.”

Ben blinked. That… wasn’t what he’d been expecting. “How?”

Jack looked away, twitching his fingers. “I found out I can make, um, portals. I think they lead to different dimensions, or realities, maybe. I think that might travel through time too. I have to try.”

“Jack, that’s not a good idea. What if -”  _ What if you die, what if you get hurt, what if you never come back -  _ “- you get lost?

Jack looked into Ben’s dark brown eyes. “I promise I’ll come back, Ben.”

Ben believed him. 

Jack knew. He smiled softly and gave Ben a hug, clutching him tightly. “Do you mind if I sleep in here?”

Ben knew that Jack knew that he didn’t have to ask. He climbed into bed, waiting for Jack to snuggle under the covers. They didn’t need to talk, just fell asleep.

When Ben woke up the next morning, Jack was gone. There was a twisting in his stomach; They could sense that something was wrong, that Jack wasn’t just somewhere in the house. But he would come back. He comforted Them.

-*-

February 11th, 2003

Number Five had been gone for two months. Jack had been gone for one. Jack would be back, bringing their wayward brother with him. 

Ben crept downstairs, where he knew Vanya would be making a sandwich for Five and turning on all the lights. 

“Hey, Vanya,” he said softly. She startled a little, dropping a marshmallow. 

“H-, uh, hi Ben,” she said, picking up the marshmallow and avoiding his eyes. 

“D’you mind if I leave out something for Jack?”

Vanya looked surprised. “Um, yeah, of course. He likes nougat, right?”

Ben nodded. “Do we have any?”

She gestured to the top shelf. “Yeah, but I can’t reach it.” She looked back at him. “I don’t think you can either, but if we get dirt on the counter, Dad might get mad.”

Ben grinned at her, pulled up his shirt and allowed one tentacle through, gently asking it to open the cupboard and pull down the box of candy for him, for Jack. 

Vanya looked on longingly. “I wish I had powers.”

“I know.”

-*-

February 12th, 2003 - March 12th, 2004

Ben came down each night, and each night he met Vanya. Mom had started putting the marshmallows, peanut butter, and candies on the bottom shelf. Ben had laughed when They grumbled about not being able to help Jack.

Jack was coming back. He promised, after all, and he’d never broken a promise. Not to any of them. 

It had been one year, two months, and a day since Jack left. 

-*-

March 13th, 2004, 3:28 AM

Jack was in the living room, passed out on the couch, when Klaus came downstairs. “So, Jacky, finally kicked it, huh?” Klaus said, and then giggled. Wow, his brother was dead! At least Ben would stop moping around, expecting him to come back. “I’ll put some nougat on your grave. Too bad you won’t be able to eat it!” Klaus found this… hilarious. He laughed until he started crying, sobbing, because his  _ brother  _ was  _ dead. _

The loud sounds finally woke Jack from his deep sleep, and he sat straight up and brandished a weird, shiny knife at Klaus. Brandished. What a funny word. It made him think of… porcupines. 

“Klaus? Klaus? Is it you?” Jack’s voice was scratchy and quieter than he’d ever heard it before. 

“The one and only!” Klaus said, through tears, smiling at his brother.

Jack gingerly got off the couch and then grabbed Klaus in a bone-crushing hug, squeezing him til he couldn’t breathe. Klaus thumped his back. “Good to see you, too, but could you not choke me?”

Wait. 

Jack hugged Klaus. 

Jack wasn’t a ghost. Wasn’t dead. 

He was back. 

When Jack let go of him, Klaus let out a whoop and ruffled his smaller brother’s dirty, nasty, greasy hair. He didn’t care that it was gross, that Jack himself was coated in dirt and blood and who-knows-what-else. He was  _ back,  _ and he was  _ alive.  _

“Shit, c’mon, let’s get you cleaned up.”

When they got to the bathroom, Klaus set water running in the bath and left Jack to wait for it to fill up while he grabbed clothes. He chose an outfit he knew Jack had liked -  _ likes, he’s alive, he’s  _ alive - with a light blue t-shirt, a weird jacket with white stripes, and plain jeans. He almost wanted to get him a skirt, but he didn’t want Jack to get in trouble.

He helps Jack out of his clothes, stopping when he’s wearing only his boxers. “Ok, why don’t you just… change into some clean underwear and take a bath in that, kay? Don’t wanna, don’t wanna make this weird.”

Jack grabs the boxers that Klaus holds out, and waits until he turns away. Klaus heard a rustle and a quiet, “Okay.” 

Without the clothes covering his thin frame, it was obvious that he hadn’t had a bath since, well, probably since he disappeared. Klaus could see lots of small scars littering his body, which was… unnerving, since his brother had never even bled before. 

“Get in. I’ll help.” 

Jack carefully lowered himself into the bath, hissing as barely-closed cuts hit the soapy water. He relaxed as the warmth hit him, though, and Klaus counted that as a win. He grabbed the shampoo and some bucket that was in the corner, pouring water over the smaller boy’s dirt-coated hair. Jack sputtered when it hit his face, but didn’t pull away.

“Didn’t feel like taking a goddamn shower, huh?” Klaus said sarcastically as he massaged the shampoo into Jack’s overgrown hair. Jack snorted a laugh. 

Klaus grabbed the bucket again and filled it with more water, quickly turning murky, which he dumped on the other’s brown hair. It looked like the right color again. 

He gently ran a rag over his brother’s body, clearing off layers and layers of grime and blood and uncovering even more scars - some faded and some fresh, many small and a few long and puffy, and one that looked like a gunshot. When the water was muddy, Jack was clean, his skin tanner than Klaus could ever remember it being. 

“Well, since you’re sitting in a mud puddle now, let’s drain that… and replace it with some nice water, kay?”

Jack nodded, standing up and shivering as he waited for the tub to fill again. 

Klaus let him soak in the warmth for… maybe an hour, before helping him out again and drying him off. Jack protested that he could dry himself, and Klaus laughed and ruffled up his hair with the towel; it looked so fluffy and Jack made a grumpy face at him.

“Okay, dude, change into your clothes now.”

“I know that, Klaus.”

Klaus laughed and turned around. 

Jack rustled around for a bit before walking out in front of Klaus again. Klaus laughed and clapped his hands excitedly. “It is so  _ good  _ to have you home! Dear ol’ Dad has been…  _ insufferable  _ without you here to brighten up the place!” He reached for a hug, but Jack flinched back and Klaus withdrew his hands, smile fading. “Where you were… it wasn’t nice, was it?”

Jack just shook his head. 

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Jack looked down at his feet, covered with socks now. He shook his head again, but tentatively reached out for his stick-thin brother. Klaus grabbed him in a fierce hug, and when Jack began to cry into his shoulder, he let him.

Finally, Jack stepped back, sniffling, and smiled at him. “I got something for you, though.” He pulled out a weird, heavy-looking necklace with a little cross. “It’s iron. Supposed to ward off ghosts. I got it… from a friend, when I told him about you.”

Klaus’s mind whirled. Wherever he’d been had clearly been terrible; hellish, even, and yet his kind and innocent little brother had found the time to… to help  _ Klaus?  _ Useless Number Four? How did he even know that Klaus was afraid of the ghosts when the rest of his siblings thought he was  _ faking  _ or  _ attention seeking? _

“Thank - uh, thank you, Jack.” He slipped the cold metal over his head, carefully keeping it from getting tangled in his curly hair, and it felt  _ right  _ somehow. 

Jack’s smile was heartbreakingly happy. Klaus returned it with one of his own. 

6:24 AM

Ben stumbled downstairs, still pulling up one sock as he hopped down the stairs. As long as he was presentable before 6:30, it would be fine. 

When he reached the bottom of the stairs, all thoughts of socks and his father fled his mind. There, at the dining table, was Klaus… chatting with someone he thought he’d never see again. “Jack! Jack!” Ben yelled, laughing as tears filled his vision and he ran towards his brother, his best friend, the only person who understood him. Jack got to his feet, a joyful smile on his face as he ran to meet Number Six. 

Ben hugged him like he would never see him again. “You came back, you came back, oh my God, you came back!” Jack buried his face in Ben’s shoulder, shaking with sobs. 

“I did, I did, I’m back, Ben, I missed you so mu-mu-much!” His voice hitched on tears, but Ben could tell that it wasn’t sadness causing him to cry. Ben swayed him back and forth gently, tucking his chin over Jack’s soft, overgrown hair. He could feel Them delightedly squirming under his skin, just as excited to see Their best friend back. 

“I got you something,” Jack mumbled against Ben’s hoodie, staying where he was but reaching one hand into his pocket to pull something out - a book, it looked like, but not like any book he’d ever seen before. It was old, and leather, and the title was in a language he couldn’t read. “The place I went, it was so different from here. There were… these awful monsters, but there were these amazing books about them, I thought you might like to read about them. It’ll be something you can’t find anywhere else.”

“Thank you, Jack, thank you, but you know you didn’t need to do that, right? It’s good enough that you’re back.” Ben grabbed the book from him, running his fingers over the texture of the old, dusty leather and feeling a surge of love for his brother. “I love you, Jack. I missed you, and I wish I’d said that before. I love you. Don’t leave again.”

“I know. I know. I love you, too, Ben. That’s why I got it for you.”

“He got something for me too! Look at this, Ben!” Klaus said excitedly from the table, holding up a necklace with a little cross for Ben to see. Ben had forgotten he was there. 

“Cool, Klaus. It’s nice!” Even if Ben was a little annoyed at his brother for ruining the moment, he looks so excited, his green eyes lighting up with joy; Ben couldn’t ruin that. 

Ben could suddenly hear the thundering footsteps of the rest of the siblings, coming down to breakfast with barely a minute to spare. He felt Jack tense in his arms just before he jerked away, his haunted blue eyes suddenly blank as he got in some sort of fighting stance and a knife appeared in his hand, the blade three-sided and shiny. 

“Get back. I’ll take care of it,” Jack said, his voice monotone as he stepped around Ben. 

“Jack, it’s okay, it’s just Luther and Diego,” Ben said worriedly, touching Jack’s shoulder. His brother jerked away and didn’t respond. “Jack, stop. Don’t hurt them!” When he still didn’t react, Ben grabbed him and pulled him back so that his arms were pinned to his sides. 

“No! Stop, what are you doing? They’ll kill you!” Jack said, turning wide, betrayed eyes to his brother. 

“Jack, whatever you think is happening isn’t. You’re home, Jack.”

His eyes seemed to suddenly clear. “Sorry, Ben, m’sorry…” he mumbled. The knife was gone when he looked back up at the stairs, where Diego had just appeared. 

“Hah, Luther, t-take that!” he yelled as he jumped the remaining stairs three at a time. He looked up and his jaw dropped. “Holy shit… J-Jack, bro, is that you?”

Jack smiled weakly. “Yeah. I’m back.”

Diego jumped forward at Jack, knocking him back with a small grunt as he hugged his brother and thumped his back. “It’s good to s-s-see you, man. It’s really good.”

Jack sighed, a small smile on his face. “I missed you, Diego. Oh!” Jack pulled back enough to hand his brother something. Ben wasn’t sure when he’d put his knife away, or where it had gone - or where he’d gotten it from, really, in the first place - but he was holding a different one now. “I brought this for you. It’s, uh, a really unique knife. As far as I know, it’s the only one that exists, and it can kill just about anything. Got it off Michael when I killed him.” Jack’s eyes glinted with something hard that hadn’t been there before and he smiled proudly. 

Diego took it almost reverently. “Just one? And you wanna give it to m-m-me? Wha’dyou mean, anything?” 

“I mean, you’re the knife guy. Of course I’d give it to you.” Ben noticed that Jack avoided the last question, but it seemed like Diego didn’t. He just grinned.

“Thanks, Jack!”

Ben realized, suddenly, that Luther had seen the whole exchange. His eyes were full of tears as he looked at their wayward brother. 

“Jack?”

Jack turned to him and he ran to their leader, their Number One, and jumped so that he was grabbing Luther’s shoulders and clinging with his legs like a monkey. “Luther! You’re so tall!” 

Luther laughed and reached around to support Jack. “It’s good to see you, too, Jack. You were gone for so long…” 

“I know. I know. I’m sorry,” Jack mumbled, burying his face in Luther’s chest. “I missed you all so much.” 

Luther sighed and for a few seconds, everything was right again. 

Then Vanya, Allison, and their father walked in. 

-*-

Since Five and Jack had disappeared, Ben had been the only one to pay attention to Vanya. The loneliness and rejection had fueled her violin-playing until it became almost the only thing she did, her fingers cut bloody at first until scars and calluses had built up.

She’d given up on both of them coming back months ago; if Five were going to travel back in time it would be to sometime not long after his disappearance. She kept putting out the sandwiches as a tradition and to sort of show Five that she still loved him, he wasn’t forgotten.

Vanya was sure it was the same reason that Ben continued to put out candies for Jack. 

And yet, here he was. His physique had changed; his face leaner and body more muscular. All his soft edges were gone and his eyes looked haunted. A massive scar ran down his neck and into his shirt; she could see smaller scars littering what else she could see of his body. He was standing near Luther; it looked like he had been hugging him and had just let go. “I’ve got something for you, Luther,” he said softly. Even his voice had changed, raspy and quiet. He pulled something from his jacket and handed it to the taller, blond-haired boy. It looked like a small book or journal. “I know you like poetry. These are poems that my friend Maggie wrote. She’d want you to have it, I think.” 

Vanya couldn’t see Luther’s face, but his voice conveyed his emotions well enough. “Jack… thank you. I love it,” he said softly, reverently.

“What is going on here?” Their father’s voice rang out angrily in the large room. Jack startled, bringing his hands to his ears. She could see dread on his face. “I expected you all to be in your seats by now!”

He didn’t have to say it twice. They all scrambled to their spots; Vanya was at the end, alone. Jack’s place had no food for a few minutes as the others began to eat, and he sat with his head bowed. The only sounds were the forks clinking against plates and the quiet voice of whoever it was that Dad always played recordings of explaining how one should react if they’re stuck in an underwater cave.

Mom came in eventually with food for Jack, setting it down in front of him. He smiled gratefully at her before starting to eat, and it broke Vanya’s heart to see him struggling to use a fork. 

When she finished eating, Vanya looked around at her siblings. Luther was reading the little leather-covered book that Jack had given him, Diego was carefully examining a golden knife she’d never seen before, and Ben was reading a huge, dusty book also bound in leather. Those must be the gifts Jack had given them. Klaus’s necklace was new, too, and she thought he might be rolling a joint under the table. Allison was painting her nails carefully. 

At 7:00 Dad stood up and the rest of them hurriedly followed. “Number Eight, why did you not come back sooner?”

Jack paled and his eyes looked to the others for help. No one said anything. “S-sorry, sir. I was attacked and lost many of my powers, temporarily. It took a little over a year to regain enough grace to create a portal, but I had to kill the person who took my power originally so that I would be back at full strength. I came as soon as I could.”

“And did you find Number Five?” Dad said, coldly.

“No, sir. He wasn’t in that world.”

“We will discuss this later, during personal training.” Jack paled even further when Dad said that, but Vanya thought he was lucky just to have a power. Or really, a few powers. 

When Dad called Jack out for special training, he caught her eyes and gestured up the stairs. He wanted her to wait for him, probably. She felt a slight bubble of happiness that he wanted to talk to her. 

Vanya had missed Jack.

-*-

“Number Eight, tell me everything.”   
If Jack were any of his siblings, except maybe Luther, he would lie. It wasn’t that he liked Reginald, he just  _ hated  _ lying. 

“I have discovered several new powers, sir, the most useful is that I can make little, um, pocket dimensions which I can store small objects in. Like so…” Jack said reluctantly, pulling a feather from Michael’s wing (he’d ripped it out during a battle) from apparently thin air. “The world I ended up in was very hostile. There was a war happening between the forces of Heaven and Hell, with any living humans caught in the crossfire. I traveled with a band of humans after Michael the Archangel took much of my power, which I have learned is called grace.” Jack shifted uncomfortably, not looking Reginald in the eye. “They taught me a lot about fighting, and I was in many fights with the angels. Their weapons could hurt me but never kill me. Eventually I regained enough of my power to kill Michael, and after that, I came home.” Jack noticed, suddenly, that he’d been ruffling the white, glowing feather from Michael’s wing, and put it back in a small pocket of space and time. 

“Nonsense, Number Eight. Angels are not real. You have experienced some kind of elaborate delusion or hallucination, probably after finding out that there is a weapon which can harm you. We will begin training. I hope you have brought one of these… angel weapons back with you.”

Jack felt blood rush to his ears.  _ It wasn’t fake… Maggie wasn’t fake, or Bobby, or Mary. They weren’t.  _ “No, no, it… it was real…” His voice felt weak. Reginald had no reason to lie.

“You have created a fantasy to cope with whatever happened. Accept that, Number Eight, and move on. It is time for training,” Reginald said impatiently. He gestures toward Jack, and the boy remembers that he’d asked for the angel blade. He reluctantly let it slip from his sleeve and handed it to Reginald. 

“You say this can harm you, but not kill you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We must make sure that, should enemies capture, they cannot use a knife like this one to torture you for information. Your pain tolerance must be improved…”

-*-

Vanya heard Jack’s quiet, careful footsteps on the stairs as he climbed them after his special training. It was late, now, and she’d been waiting for hours. She’d had a book, at least, so she wasn’t bored.

He sat next to her silently in the dark before finally saying something in a voice like burnt feathers, soft yet pained. “I brought you something, too, Vanya. It’s fragile, be careful…” 

She heard rustling before brittle paper was set in her hands. “When I told my friends about you, a few of them worked together to write you a special piece of music. This is the only copy that exists.”

Vanya held the papers close, breathing in the scent of the dusty paper and ink. “It’s perfect, Jack. I - thank you. When I learn it, I’ll play it for you, if you want…” Her voice was quiet in the dark house. She didn’t deserve this. 

“I’d like that.” Vanya heard him stealing up the stairs to his room in the attic, and she let out a sigh. She was alone again, but not quite as much as before. 

-*-

Ben had been expecting it. 

He rolled over and let Jack lay on his bed. 

Neither of them mentioned the nightmares the other had, just offering silent comfort and warmth. 

-*-

March 14th, 2004 - November 27th, 2006

The change wasn’t obvious at first. Jack had seemed the same, if a bit more wary, a bit less soft. 

The day after he came back, Dad had told them all that Jack’s journey was fake, or some shit like that. Klaus didn’t really believe it; after all, his siblings didn’t believe him about why he took the drugs or that the ghosts were awful. He understood that things weren’t always as they seemed.

He still didn’t believe Dad’s story, but something was definitely wrong with the youngest brother (yes, they were all the same age, yes, Jack was still the youngest). He would forget what was happening, what day it was, or what he was supposed to be doing. He was still as sweet as ever, but he was always tense, always on the edge of his seat, always ready to run. He kept a machete above his bed and kept sprinkling salt over everything, and muttered about wardings and sigils as he painted symbols on the walls of his room. On missions, he was ruthless and efficient.

Jack had always been as terrified of hurting people as Ben still was, but now he sent waves of criminals back until they cracked their heads open, or concentrated until they were blown to bits. It was, quite honestly, terrifying. 

His other siblings whispered that it was trauma, that he’d gone crazy, that he was dangerous now because he was uncontrolled. Klaus was sure that it was something he had learned. His movements were too sure to be anything but trained. He would wave off the blood and comfort any young hostages with a kindness and surety that had always been covered up by his shyness before; this, too, seemed like something he had learned.

He grew closer to his old self, though, after a while. Smiled softly and picked dandelions and tried on skirts and makeup with Klaus and Allison (his gift to her had been a bolt of beautiful, shimmery fabric, which she had sewn into a gorgeous dress. Klaus wasn’t sure what it was made of but it wasn’t like anything he’d ever seen. She wore it as much as she could but it never seemed to wear out or tear.) He was jumpy, though, and never gave them hugs anymore (and it wasn’t like Klaus missed that, that he craved the affection or anything like that) and whirled in a panic when someone put a hand on his shoulder or startled him. 

The only person he was comfortable around was Ben. The two of them moved around each other with an easy grace; planets in each other’s orbit. A binary system. 

Ben brought Jack out of his personal darkness, showed him that it was  _ safe  _ here. 

And then one day, Jack and Ben and Luther went on a mission, and only Jack and Luther came home.

Klaus wasn’t sure what had happened, exactly (he’d been high out of his mind at the time, so you couldn’t blame him), but Jack had come through the door and he’d been  _ covered  _ in blood, which was the first warning sign. Jack always cleaned off the blood. He hated having it on him. The second thing that told Klaus something was  _ wrong  _ was that his face was terrifyingly blank. Jack’s emotions had always played across his face so clearly, and the absolute lack of feeling on his face in his eyes rattled Klaus more than he’d care to admit. 

He didn’t talk to any of them, just slowly walking to Ben’s room and shutting the door. He didn’t come out for days - not until the funeral. 

-*-

November 28th, 2006, 2:00 PM

Klaus had been sober for a few days, in the hopes of conjuring Ben. Jack had been silent for just as long. 

At the funeral, as Dad blamed them -  _ them -  _ for Ben’s death, as the others began to fight, Jack stood stock-still and let the snow begin to build up on his shoulders, in his hair, on his eyelashes. He had dropped his umbrella before they even left the house. 

The others went inside, one by one, until it was only Klaus and Jack left in the cold. 

Jack moved, suddenly, dropping to his knees next to Ben’s cold, stone coffin. He fell forward, his body resting against it, and he began to  _ wail,  _ draping himself over the place where Ben lay. He sounded like one of the ghosts that plagued Klaus, and it made him shiver. 

Jack’s thin frame shook with sobs as he screamed, the snow turning his dark uniform white as Klaus blinked back tears. 

He moved away from his stricken brother and into a little pavilion nearby, shaking off his umbrella and closing it. He shook out his hands, nervous to see if it would  _ work,  _ if he could find Ben and bring back his spirit. 

Klaus concentrated, letting the cold power flood his veins and flow into his hands. He pushed until the last reserves of his energy were gone, and then - 

“Klaus?”

There was Ben, looking lost and shocked, but not  _ dead,  _ he looked so alive. He had Ben back, and everything would be okay. 

It was only later that he realized he’d forgotten about Jack, probably because he’d been so deathly quiet and still by the time Ben was there, covered in snow that hid him from Klaus and Ben. 

November 29th, 4:23 AM

Klaus had been running around with Ben since he conjured him, getting steadily more drunk as night had bled into early morning. The thing that finally snapped him out of it was a strange sound coming from Ben’s room. Klaus thought it sounded like Jack crying, and the sound of something thudding dully.

He gently knocked on the door while Ben just walked through it. Klaus could hear his breathing stutter as he stopped crying, but he didn’t respond. Klaus was getting worried now, and when Ben started talking in a low, sad voice, too quiet for Klaus to hear, he started to panic. “Jack? Are you okay in there, buddy?” The thudding sound started up again, and Jack’s crying grew louder. 

When Jack still didn’t respond, Klaus decided he was going in whether Jack wanted him or not. 

“Jack, I’m coming in,” he said, opening the door. 

He couldn’t have prepared for what waited for him on the other side.

Jack stood in the middle of the room, sobbing. His shirt was torn and he held his silvery knife in one hand, stabbing it into his chest over, and over, and  _ over -  _

“Jack!” Klaus yelped, rushing forward to wrap his little brother in a tight hug. He pressed his face into Jack’s soft hair and pet it gently with one hand while he took Jack’s knife with the other. “It’s going to be okay, bro. It’s going to be okay.”

“I didn’t save him, Klaus, he died and- and- and h-h-he’s never coming ba-ha-hack!” Jack sobbed, the tears making his words come out in gasps. 

“No, no, this is not your fault, okay? It is not your fault.” Klaus rubbed his back soothingly while still combing thin fingers through his brother’s hair. 

Jack didn’t reply, but he brought his hands up to hug Klaus back, and that was something at least. 

“Besides, Ben’s right here. He’s right here, I can see him. Can’t you, can’t you sense him or something?”

Jack quieted for a moment before breathing out, “I can. He’s here, how? How, Klaus?”

Klaus glanced over at Ben, who looked stricken from Jack’s earlier words still. “I summoned him, I summoned him, I think it’s- it’s- I think it’s a new ability.”

“Hi, Ben,” Jack said quietly without looking up.

“Hi, Jack,” Ben replied, even if Jack couldn’t hear him. He had a wobbly smile on his face as he looked at his best friend, his favourite brother. 

“You should sleep, Jack,” Klaus said gently. “You can sleep in my room, kay? Does that sound good?”

Jack nodded against his neck and followed Klaus and an unseen Ben as they went down the stars to Klaus’s room. “Wait here for a minute, Jack. I’m gonna, gonna get some hot chocolate.”

Klaus watched Jack sit down on his bed before running downstairs, and then down again to the kitchen. Mom had taught him how to make hot chocolate from scratch soon after Dad started putting him in the mausoleum; it was her way of silent rebellion against Dad’s training as it chased away the chill of the ghosts. That was how he chose to think of it, anyway. 

He poured milk into a pan, quickly adding sugar and cocoa and whisking it together. He kept dipping his finger into the milk until it was the right temperature, then added chocolate chips and a tiny bit of vanilla. Klaus had it down to an art by this point. He poured it into three mugs, adding cinnamon to his and marshmallows to Ben and Jack’s.

He walked up the stairs carefully, with the third cup tucked against his chest. When he got to the room, he used his elbow to push the door open and quietly said, “The party’s here, baby! I know you missed me.” He waggled his eyebrows at Jack, and he could see Ben rolling his eyes in the corner of his vision.

Jack smiled weakly and took the cup Klaus offered him with both hands, cupping it between his palms. He sucked all the marshmallows into his mouth off the top of the cup first, and Klaus gasped in mock outrage. “You can’t- you can’t just eat them off the top, Jacky! You gotta, you gotta let them melt a little first!” Jack giggled, which was what he was going for, and stuck out his tongue at his taller brother.

Klaus set down Ben’s cup on his end table and started sipping his own. Ben sat on the bed next to Jack, and Klaus found it unnerving how he was  _ there  _ but the blankets didn’t fold under him, the bed didn’t sink, Jack didn’t look at him. 

“I promised that no more of my friends would die. When I was over there. After Maggie got killed. I tried - I tried so hard, Klaus.”

“I know,” Ben whispered, trying to gently touch Jack’s hand but phasing through instead, “I know.”

“I know,” Klaus repeated, and put his own hand on Jack’s for Ben. “It’s okay. It wasn’t your fault. There was - was nothing you could have done, Jack.”

Jack gave him a melancholy smile. “There’s always something I could have done.”

And Klaus had no answer for that, so they sat in silence until Klaus fell asleep, Jack still there as a silent guardian.

When he woke up the next morning, Jack was gone.

-*-

One by one, the siblings left the cold mansion - Five first, then Ben, then Jack, Klaus, Diego, Vanya, and finally Allison. Luther remained behind, alone, until the terrible accident that would eventually lead to him leaving, too; not by choice, but still farther than any of the others. 

After years of feeling isolated and unloved, Vanya decided to show the world her hurt, hoping that maybe,  _ maybe  _ her family would see what they’d done to her. She wrote a book about her childhood, telling every little secret and all the things they’d said to hurt her. 

When she got to the chapter she was supposed to be writing about Jack, she didn’t know what to say. He’d always been so kind, so loving and full of life. But this was a book for secrets, so she told them. She wrote how he’d disappeared, and when he came back he was  _ changed;  _ he was vicious and ruthless and broken and sad, he painted in blood on the walls and salt on the floors. 

He gave her music, beautiful music, and he hid his broken parts well. 

He was crazy, he said things about his father and angels and demons and Mary and Maggie and Bobby, about his uncles, the archangels. 

He cried at night and pulled feathers from his golden wings and brown hair from his head, trying to scrub invisible blood from his hands. 

She wrote that Jack had run away just days after Ben had died, leaving her alone with an uncaring family. He’d abandoned her, she realized, and suddenly she had no guilt about telling all his dirty secrets and how he’d lost his mind looking for her brother and not even  _ found  _ him.

She hadn’t seen him in years, and she wrote out all her anger at his betrayal and her sadness at being  _ alone,  _ and she hoped he read it and she hoped he  _ didn’t.  _

He read it.

One day he showed up at her apartment, his hair long and wild and his eyes dancing between the corners of the room. He wore clothes painted in blood and dirt, and his hands shook after she opened the door. 

“I’m sorry, Vanya, I’m sorry for leaving you,” he sobbed, grabbing her in a tight hug. “I couldn’t stand it anymore, not without Ben, and I tried, I tried but I can’t die, Vanya, so I had to leave, and I didn’t want to leave you but I couldn’t take you with me, and I’m sorry I left you alone,” and suddenly Vanya felt cold rush over her body. He’d read it, and here he was, apologizing and she realized that she wasn’t really mad, not at him.

“It’s okay, Jack. It wasn’t your fault, I’m not mad. Come inside, let’s get you cleaned up,” because he looked so wild, and so sad, and she would help him cut his hair before he left. 

He followed her like a lost puppy, and she got some clothes from her closet that she kept for when Klaus stayed in her apartment because hers were just too small for Jack. Vanya filled up a bath for him and closed the door with a gentle, “Go ahead, take as long as you need.”

She practiced her violin and forgot he was there until she felt the shadow of eyes on her and turned around to see Jack standing there, all his clothes clean and his skin now clear of dust and rust-red blood and his hair wet but clean. His eyes, though, they looked so different, so haunted, and when he’d come back from wherever he’d gone looking for Five she thought that that was the saddest his eyes could get but God was she wrong.

“I like your playing,” he whispered, his  _ sad  _ blue eyes wide and strangely innocent. Something about him looked like someone out of a horror movie, and maybe it was the scar she could see better under his baggy clothes, or the wet, droopy hair, or the way he held himself and shivered but this wasn’t the brother she remembered. He didn’t look  _ older,  _ though, which also made her want to edge away from him. Jack hadn’t aged a day since he left, hadn’t grown taller or larger, had only grown more tortured.

“Um, thanks, Jack. Do you want to hear me play the one you gave me?” Vanya replied, louder than usual to offset his strange quiet.

He nodded at her, but kept standing in the hall. It was unnerving, but mostly it was sad. Something had happened to him, something she’d never understand.

She set the bow to her string and lost herself in the music, letting it flow out of her along with any emotions she had been keeping inside; the piece was strangely versatile and always reflected her mood. Today was a bad day, and it sounded mournful and angry at once. When she was done, Jack looked at her with his eyes still so wide and he clapped.

“It sounds so nice, Vanya. They’d be happy with it. They worked so hard, you know, to make it, and to find the paper,” Jack said, still whispering. Vanya found that the simple words pushed her very off-kilter, there was so much meaning behind them that she’d never understand. She’d never really know who made this music, their favourite colors or their life stories or the way they moved. She thought they might be dead, from the way Jack talked, but they weren’t real anyways.

Vanya had forgotten, for a moment, that Jack’s journey had not been as bad as he acted like it had. It was imaginary, even if in his head it was terrible and just as traumatizing as it would have been otherwise. Those people weren’t real, but they were still dead. 

“Do you want me to cut your hair? It’s getting kind of long…” she trailed off, waiting for his reaction. Jack just nodded and ran one hand through his wild hair. Vanya went and grabbed some scissors, directing Jack to stand over her trash can. She cut it decently short but messy, then told him to wait on the couch while she got some buzz cut clipper things from a guy in an apartment nearby for the parts that needed to be shorter. 

When she was completely done, it looked… not as bad as she’d expected. You could tell that it wasn’t done at a shop, but it wasn’t  _ awful.  _ A huge improvement from before, for sure. 

“How does that feel?”

Jack ran his hands through his hair. “Nice. It feels nice,” he said, and his voice was barely above a whisper but at least it  _ was  _ above a whisper.

“Hey, do you want to stay here for awhile?” She hoped he’d say yes, that she could take care of her wild brother and fix him-

“I can’t. I’m sorry,” and he looked heartbroken as he said it and  _ this  _ is how she knew that he really couldn’t.

“Oh, that’s okay. You don’t have to.”

He smiled at her with sadness leaking from every inch of his body. “Do you mind if, if I let out my wings?”

“No, of course not.”

He closed his eyes for a moment and then there, there were the wings she’d seen all through her childhood except that they were  _ dirty  _ and there were so many feathers missing that they looked like they belonged to a dead bird and not her little brother. “They’re sore, Vanya, they hurt,” and he was crying again, and she held him gently and massaged his wings and she cleaned them for him, and when he finally left late that night he looked so much better and yet still just as bad. 

Once Jack was gone, the only brother she saw for the next few years was Klaus, who comes into her house so high he can’t speak and tends to leave with more money than he came in with. She couldn’t turn him away, though. He’s her brother.

-*-

After the popularity of Vanya’s book died down, everyone forgot about the Umbrella Academy for a while.

Eventually, a magazine made an article about them, one of those  _ “Where are they now?”  _ ones. Obviously, they knew that Allison was an actor with a kid and a husband and that Luther was on the moon, but the others are less well known.

It’s speculated that Diego has settled down and is living a domestic life, based on sightings of him with a woman believed to be a police officer. He scoffed at that and showed it to Eudora, and they both laughed at the idea that he would ever really  _ settle down.  _ Sure, they lived together, but he was still out and active. He wouldn’t call it settling down.

He didn’t know how accurate the other’s sections were, though. According to the article, Klaus was living with some lady (again based on sightings), which was possible. He hadn’t seen Klaus in awhile. He didn’t think it was likely, though. 

Vanya apparently gives violin lessons. He’s tempted to call her up and yell at her, but resists the urge. Better to let her think he hadn’t even read the stupid book. Actually, Diego thought it was weird they included her at all. She wasn’t a part of their family, not anymore, and she’d never been part of the Umbrella Academy.

When he gets to the bit about Jack, his stomach twists. Jack had disappeared after Ben’s funeral, and as far as he knew, none of his siblings had seen Number Eight since. Diego’d always suspected that Dad had gone a bit too far in his training, taken out his frustration from Ben’s death and ended the life of another of Diego’s brothers. He didn’t let himself mourn because  _ he could be  _ okay, he  _ could  _ be alive... but Diego didn’t really believe that. Couldn’t let himself believe that. 

The article said that he worked at a pet shelter, rehoming and healing stray cats. Diego called the place up afterward, but they said that no, The Angel didn’t work at their shelter, and could he please only call again if he wanted a pet.

Apparently, people thought that Five was dead. Diego didn’t. Five would come home, someday. It was just… taking him awhile.

Maybe someday, they would all see each other again - well, not Ben or Jack, but the rest of them. Reunited, a family again.

Or not a family, according to Vanya. Didn’t matter. She wasn’t really part of it.

-*-

March 21, 2019

Number One got the news on his little wristwatch as he saw the sun rise, lighting the pale surface of the moon. 

Number Two saw it on a TV as he wiped the blood from his knives, with the bodies of robbers surrounding him. 

Number Three heard it from photographers asking awful, insensitive questions. 

Number Four also saw it on TV, but it was a tiny TV in the corner of the ambulance he lay in after  _ yet another  _ overdose. 

Number Five knew it, in the future, from a newspaper he found. 

Number Six knew when Number Four did.

Number Seven saw it in the window of a shop, a hundred screens broadcasting the news of her father’s death.

Number Eight knew when Number Four sent him a quick prayer, barely understandable but still clear enough. Prayers could cross worlds, when they were from his family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me know what you think! if anyone's interested i could continue it :P


	2. It All Comes Loose if You Pull a Single Thread

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The siblings reunite. Some things go well, but most don't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from 'kill the ghost' by motherfolk. really good song, u should listen to it (while u read the chapter, perhaps??)  
> posted 1/28/21 (it shows as the 29th but it isnt over here)

March 24th, 2019

8 days to the end of the world

Allison had been looking around the second floor, memories flooding back as she wandered the familiar halls. When she heard footsteps and a quiet, familiar voice, she went back down. There was Vanya, looking lost and staring at - either Mom or the portrait of Five. Probably the portrait. She’d always been closest to Five. 

“Vanya? You’re actually here,” Allison said, letting a tiny bit of her shock into her voice. She huffed a laugh.

“Hey, Allison,” Vanya said, and her voice sounded wary, beaten down. Allison felt - a little guilty, maybe, that her sister was so nervous.

“Hey, sis,” Allison said, and she made sure that her love and concern for her little sister was obvious. Even if she’d spilled all their secrets, she was still little Vanya. She gave her a careful hug.

“Ah. What is  _ she  _ doing here?” Allison mentally rolled her eyes. Diego, of course, would be furious over the book, and not holding back anything. “You don’t belong here, not after what you did.” 

Allison felt frustration welling up and she pushed it down, mostly. “You’re seriously going to do this  _ today?”  _ She glanced over his bizarre leather outfit, covered in knives. “Way to dress for the occasion, by the way.”

“At least I’m wearing black,” he shot back as he stomped up the stairs.

“You know what? I, um, maybe he’s right. I should leave.”   
“Forget about him.” She gave Vanya a gentle smile. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Just then, someone else walked through the heavy doors. Allison looked up from her sister, and Vanya turned around to see - 

To see - 

Jack. 

Their littlest brother (even by height; he was taller than just Vanya and, well, taller than Five had been when he ran away) was there, wet from the rain that plastered his hair to his head. He looked nervous, but… he always looked nervous. Ever since he went looking for Five.

Jack looked as if he hadn’t showered in days, his clothes and skin dirty and the water leaving tracks of clear skin. 

_ He’s going to get the floor all muddy.  _ Allison felt a little bad for thinking it, but it was true. 

She could worry about that later. Right now she just wanted to hug her brother. She’d thought he was  _ dead.  _ He was still standing in the doorway, and there was a bit of an awkward pause while she walked over to him. 

“Jack… I thought that you were dead.” Allison reached out to him, making sure to broadcast her movements so he’d be more comfortable, and when he didn’t pull back she gently wrapped her arms around him. Jack went stiff for a moment before hugging her back, and  _ Christ  _ she’d missed him. He was going to ruin her clothes but that was a small price to pay for seeing her little brother again.

“I missed you, Alli.” His voice broke on the nickname. 

“I missed you too, Jack. I missed you a lot.”

~~ Allison missed Claire, but at least she’d gotten one family member back.  ~~

Vanya hung back, but when Allison released Jack she came forward and gave him a tight hug as well. “It’s great to see you, Jack.”

Jack smiled at them, as sweet as she remembered him being. Some things never change. 

Many more do.

“We’re going to meet in the living room soon, do you want to get cleaned up first?” Allison said tentatively. He was so dirty, but she didn’t want to be  _ rude.  _

He nodded and held up his hand (like he always used to, how had she forgotten that) as he walked up the stairs. 

“He - he never grew up. Why does he look the same?” Vanya said nervously once he was out of sight. 

“I don’t know. It’s weird,” Allison said, her mind whirling. She would need awhile to process everything… Jack was  _ alive.  _

He was  _ alive _ , so maybe everything would be alright someday. 

-*-

Jack was… home. It felt weird, after so long being away, after seeing so many  _ awful, awful things.  _

Ben was still gone. Somehow, he’d expected him to be in his room, reading something, and he’d look up when Jack came in and smile at him and say,  _ Hey, Jack,  _ and  _ It’s good to see you  _ and  _ Dad is gone, wanna throw shit at his portrait?  _ But he wasn’t.

Jack knew that Ben was with Klaus, that he was  _ here,  _ but in the ways that mattered, he wasn’t.

-*-

Jack had missed his family so much, and now here he was and Luther was saying that - that one of them killed Reginald?

“Hey, hey, it’s alright, just breathe, Jack, just breathe.” At least Diego was being nice, and Jack tried to follow his directions. It was hard, though, to get air into his lungs as he sobbed. 

He had come hoping to have a nice, peaceful reunion, and say goodbye at last to the man who haunted his dreams. Apparently, Reginald’s painful, sticky darkness clung to Luther even after his death.

“I - I - why would he say that, Di - Di - Diego? We wouldn’t ki-hi-hi-hill him!” Jack gasped out shakily. He wrapped his wings around himself.

“I know, Jack, I know. He’s just being an asshole. Dad died of a heart attack,” Diego said calmly, patting Jack’s back between his wings gently.

After a few minutes, he was finally able to stop. His breaths still came with uneven crying hitches, but for the most part he was fine. He pushed his wings back into - wherever it was they were when they weren’t touchable. 

“You should go up to your room or something, Jack,” Diego said, and sighed. He stood up and offered a hand to Jack.

“Okay.” He got to his feet, but his knees were shaky and he fell over, Diego catching him. 

“I’ll carry you, no problem. But if you mention this to anyone else you’re dead, understand?” Diego said gruffly. Jack laughed breathily and let Diego pick him up, resting his head on his brother’s chest. The knives were cold against his skin.

Diego carried him up the stairs. His knees bumped up against Jack’s back as he walked. Finally, they made it up to the attic and Diego turned towards Jack’s room. 

“Wait! Can… can you put me in Ben’s room?” 

Diego stiffened a little, but carried him into Ben’s room. It looked like it hadn’t even been touched since he died, and a thick layer of dust covered everything. Jack concentrated for a moment and it disappeared. 

Diego’s sharp inhale was the only reaction he got before he set Jack on the bed gently. “That’s a neat trick, bro.”   
Jack smiled weakly at him and turned on his stomach before letting his wings puff out to fill the space. Diego touched them softly. Jack knew they were missing a lot of feathers, and the left one was crooked from a break that hadn’t healed quite right. Diego’s hand stopped when he felt the awkward bend in the bone. “What happened here?”

Jack pressed his face against his arm, mumbling “Nothing, was just clumsy.”

“Bullshit. You’re the least clumsy of any of us, except maybe Allison. How does she even wear those heels?”

Jack laughed, his shoulders and wings shaking. “I don’t know! And she looks so tall, I’m not used to her being taller than me.”   
“Oh yeah, and why do you still look like you’re 16?”

“18, actually. I don’t know. I just… stopped growing, or changing, I guess. It’s weird to see you all looking older when I look in the mirror and just see… a teenager.”   
“At least you don’t have acne.”

Jack smiled into his arm. “True.”

“God, you’re so shivery. Are you cold?”

Jack hadn’t realized. He was pretty sure that was how he was all the time, now. The persistent shivers, no matter the temperature. He’d gotten used to it. “No.”

“Oh.” A beat, and then: “Do you want to talk about it?”

Jack shook his head, still not looking at his brother. Diego sat down on the bed. “You know you can talk to me about anything, right?”

“You wouldn’t believe me,” Jack said sadly. He still remembered when he was younger how they’d tell him that his memories were wrong, there were no angels, and he couldn’t paint sigils in their rooms. Why couldn’t they see he was just trying to keep him safe, that he was telling the truth?

“Look, I know we didn’t always listen to you when we were younger, but as long as you’re not telling me that you met Jesus or, or aliens or something, I’ll believe you.”   
Didn’t  _ always  _ listen? They’d laughed at him, all except Ben, who’d just hugged him, and Klaus, who looked at him with old eyes and said he understood. “It’s okay. I’m going to get a therapist, I think.”

Diego sighed, absently petting Jack’s wings. It felt wonderful. “I should probably get one, too. Eudora was always making me go to therapy. It helped.”

Jack smiled again. Diego was always so understanding.  ~~ Not always. All Jack had ever wanted was to be understood. Why couldn’t anyone- ~~ “Who’s Eudora?”

Diego coughed uncomfortably. “My, uh, my ex.”

“Sounds like you still like her.”

“I guess. She’s a detective. I don’t like to wait for the government to take care of criminals. It just didn’t work out.”

“How’d you meet her, then?”

Diego smiled, softer than Jack had seen him today. “At the police academy. After I, uh, dropped out, I lived with her for awhile.”

“I didn’t know you were going to be a police officer.”

Diego stretched, his back popping. “Yeah, it didn’t really work out, but at least I met Eudora.”

“You really like her, huh.”   
“Yeah. Not that I’d tell her that.”

“You should!”

Diego sighed, and he got up, and Jack knew he’d done something  _ wrong  _ because Diego wasn’t touching his wings anymore, and that was always Diego’s way of showing him affection. Ruffling his hair or gently rubbing his wings, putting scarred hands on his face before pulling him into a hug.

“I’m going to go talk to Luther about what he said, okay? Hang in tight, buddy.”

Jack didn’t try to stop him, didn’t say anything at all, just turned his head away. Diego was mad at him, he’d said the wrong thing, shouldn’t have  _ pushed  _ him to tell this girl how much he liked her.

Who was he to criticize Diego? He couldn’t even save people who mattered to him, he was a  _ stupid, useless nephil,  _ like Michael had said.

Nothing he did was right, and he could never help anyone. 

-*-

The funeral was awful. Reginald’s ashes thudded to the ground, the rain weighing them down, and Jack thinks that’s fitting. Then, Luther and Diego started fighting and Jack was thrown back to  _ there,  _ and they’re not his brothers, they’re angels arguing over whether to kill him or take his grace.

He panicked, ran to the corner of the courtyard and huddled there, his hands and arms clutching his head. No one noticed, and they all went inside. Jack was still hearing the sounds of angels’ true voices ringing in his ears, and the screams of a boy named Kevin as he tried to kill Mary, and Maggie’s stuttering gasp as she was run through.

Finally, his breath trembling as much as his body, he raised his head. 

He was in the courtyard.

He was in Michael’s stronghold.

Ben’s statue had fallen over, and Jack let out a strangled sob-giggle because the statue hadn’t looked like Ben anyways, but it made his heart ache to see that his siblings really had such little care for their fallen brother.

Maggie had fallen over, and Jack had caught her, his eyes glowing as he tried to heal her but it was  _ too late.  _ He was holding her in his lap, stroking her dark hair. 

She wasn’t there, that was years ago.

Jack held his head in his hands and sobbed, his tears mixing with the rain. 

He stayed there until a loud crackling sound made him jerk his head up, vision spinning from having his hands pressed to his eyes. There was something there, something that felt like Five, and it was blue and bright and didn’t belong, it  _ didn’t belong. _

Klaus was there, then, and he threw a fire extinguisher through the blue portal, and there was a man on the other side but when he fell through it was  _ Five. _

Jack had spent so long looking for his big brother, and now, here he was. His soul didn´t match his body, too stretched and tarnished and sad, but also too hard and thorny.

¨Anyone else see little Number Five, or is it just me?” Klaus asked.

Jack rushed forward, unconsciously manifesting his wings and wrapping Five in a tight hug. His wings followed his arms until Five was completely surrounded by soaking wet Jack, and he pushed at his brother's chest but Jack wasn't going to let go.

“Jack - what are you doing? Get off -” but he didn’t teleport away, and he could have,  _ he could,  _ it would be easy, so Jack didn’t. 

“You came back,” Vanya whispered, too quiet for anyone but Jack and Five to hear. She must have walked over while the others stood farther away. 

Five’s voice hardened a bit, and he pushed Jack off. “I’m back.” 

He disappeared into the air, and reappeared next to the door, and they all followed him. Jack felt pain shoot through his chest at Five’s dismissal, but he followed anyways. 

In the kitchen, Five started to grab the ingredients for his favourite food but tripped over too-long pants. He looked down at himself, at his clothes - too small, too big - and threw the glass bottle of peanut butter to the ground. It shattered ( _ breaking stained glass, his father-not-his-father throws the blade towards him-)  _ and Five trembled; Jack couldn’t tell if it was from anger or sadness until Five turned around and his face was so dark with rage that Jack almost couldn’t recognize his brother. 

Just as quickly, his face smoothed out into calm indifference and he grabbed another jar of peanut butter and quickly made his sandwich. 

“Five, where were you? Why didn’t you come back sooner? It’s been - it’s been 17 years,” Vanya said quietly. 

Five ignored her questions in favor of asking the date. 

She scrambled to tell him, clearly trying to regain his good graces. 

“So? Are we going to talk about this? Like Vanya said, it’s been 17 years.” Luther said, much more loudly than Vanya had. 

“Oh, it’s been much longer than that,” Five snarled. 

As his siblings continued to talk to Five, Jack just listened. Five was 58 now. Older than all of them. Trapped in time. Stuck, like Jack himself had been. 

“Who’s Delores?” Jack asked quietly during a lull in the talking. 

Five’s face softened, just the tiniest bit. Not for Jack  _ (oh how he wished it were for him, but Five was different now…)  _ but for Delores, his… partner, or wife, that was unclear. Together for over thirty years.

Together longer than they had been alive, together longer than any of them had been with him.

No wonder he was only soft for her. They must be strangers to him now.

Jack snapped out of his spiraling thoughts to find himself alone in the kitchen.  _ They’re leaving you. Someday they’ll leave you forever… just a matter of time, and probably not much of it.  _

He let out a sigh, forced his heavy limbs to cooperate. His feet moved almost on their own, though, leading him up the stairs, past his siblings’ rooms, up to Ben’s. 

It was cold. Ben had always kept it warm. The floor felt too hard under his feet, and he laid on the floor; he pulled one ragged wing over his body and let the other splay out behind him and soak in the terrible cold. 

He didn’t need to sleep much at all, but lately it seemed like his eyes were always heavy. 

-*-

“Klaus, go check on Jack.” Ben struggled to keep his voice even; yelling at Klaus had never helped convince him.

“Oh, but Ben, I can’t let poor Diego go off all by himself! He needs someone to keep him from sulking like a teenager. And that someone is  _ me.” _

“He’s an adult! So are you, even if you don’t  _ act  _ like it.” Ben took a deep breath (not that he could actually breathe) to steady himself. “Jack doesn’t seem to be doing well. I can’t help him, so I think  _ you  _ should. Please?” Hopefully he hadn’t used the ‘dead’ card too many times, it was hard enough convincing his idiot brother to send a quick prayer to Jack every once in a while (Ben had been the only sibling who Jack had told about the prayers, and they had nearly died with him). 

“Ugh,  _ fine,  _ Ben. Only after Diego buys us waffles, though.”

Ben turned his back to Klaus and pulled his hood up, the easiest way he had of showing Klaus that he had  _ crossed a line.  _ If he tried to talk to him Klaus would just turn it into a joke, but if he ignored him then he would be more likely to actually do what Ben asked. Or to not forget. 

Klaus barely made it into the car before Diego drove off, but Ben could see past his annoyance; Diego was glad that he and Klaus were still friends, or maybe that he was still alive. Something like that. He had almost smiled at Klaus’s antics, that had to mean something. 

If only he and Jack could still be friends like that. 

It was better with him than the rest of the siblings, at least, who had yelled at Klaus for saying Ben was still with him; to be fair he had been too drunk to make much sense. Jack knew he was there.

Sometimes, that just made it hurt worse. That his best friend, his favourite brother (and he never hesitated to remind Klaus of that), knew he was there but couldn’t see him, couldn’t talk to him. 

The car stopped and Ben snapped back to reality; they were at a river, it looked like, and Diego was standing near the edge. He was always so  _ dramatic,  _ Jesus Christ. 

Klaus tried to get him to forget that he wasn’t talking, needling him about waffles, but Ben had had 13 years of practice and was excellent at ignoring his brother. 

It was  _ annoying,  _ though. What had Ben done to deserve this? Sitting in a dark car with Klaus as he rambled about breakfast foods in the middle of the night? He almost sighed but that would be a reaction to Klaus and so he stared resolutely forward. 

Diego finally came back from his weird dramatic river-staring (did they come here  _ just  _ for him to look at the water like some edgy teenager in a badly-written YA dystopian novel?) and Klaus announced that ‘they’ had decided on waffles. 

As if. (Ben did like waffles, though. Damn. Klaus was tricky. If he didn’t say anything then Klaus probably wouldn’t get an extra plate for him, and Ben enjoyed playing at being alive, even if it was only for a few moments.)

Diego rolled his eyes, but drove Klaus to some diner that they’d been to a few times before, but that had no sign on the front - neither of them knew what it was called. The food was good, though; according to Klaus, at least. Not like he had great taste, though. He liked eating  _ straight fucking fondant  _ so maybe he couldn’t trust that. 

Why was this place even open right now?

Klaus ran ahead and threw open the doors with both hands, leaving his arms out. 

Diego grabbed the back of his coat and turned him around. “What the fuck?”   
Klaus lowered his voice in an imitation of Diego. “I’m Diego, I like to be dramatic and I’m everyone’s least favourite knock-off Batman!”

Diego pressed his lips together irritatedly. “You know, I could leave. I could just not buy you food.”

Klaus immediately dropped the voice and whined, “No, Diego, pleeease? Pretty please? We want waffles!”  _ Again with the ‘we.’  _

Diego rolled his eyes (he sure did that a lot, maybe it was just around Klaus, in which case Ben didn’t blame him) and sat down at a booth, dragging Klaus behind him. When he let go, Klaus brushed imaginary dust off his coat and sat down across from Diego. 

“So, you want waffles, right?” Diego said. Ben honestly wasn’t sure if he was joking, or serious. 

“Ja, liebster Bruder!” Klaus said gleefully, smacking his hands on the table loudly. 

“I thought  _ I  _ was your favourite, Klaus!” Ben said before inwardly groaning. He’d lasted longer than usual, at least. 

“Nope! It’s Diego now, you don’t buy me waffles!” 

Diego didn’t even look up, used to this by now.    
He ended up ordering waffles for Klaus (who did request an extra plate, which Ben was grateful for) and some kind of protein shake and scrambled eggs for himself.

“Diego, how do you  _ eat  _ that stuff?” Klaus asked when he saw his brother gulping down the shake. 

Diego hit his chest (what the fuck?) before replying, “My body’s a  _ temple,  _ Klaus, and I treat it like one.” 

Klaus had already shoved a huge bite of waffle in his mouth and mumbled “to each his own” before returning to his food. 

They got so caught up in talking, catching up, and joking around that Ben forgot about checking on Jack until Klaus was already asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't know how i feel about this chapter but i wanted to post it today cause that way its only a 1-week wait. let me know if i left any plot holes/missed something obvious please, or any suggestions for what to do next! i have no plans so any ideas are appreciated!  
> thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed, comments fuel my writing so if u like it (and u want to aiuwgnkwaiegh dont let me pressure u) please let me know! <3  
> (ps don’t hug ppl if they don’t want to be hugged 😔 jack is just bad at social situations)  
> (pss adding this day after posting, klaus is not nice :) he is acting the way he is to get diego to buy him food. he’s had it harder in this au than in canon and acts accordingly. he’s still sweet and kind at heart of course it is just buried farther down. i mean you saw him in the first chapter. he’s still that person, he’s just had more Issues™️. he will be back to the klaus we know and love soon)


	3. We've Got So Much Time to Kill

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five's first days in the apocalypse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for mild suicidal thoughts, and five's general bad mindset. plus yknow finding the bodies of his dead family  
> this chapters dedicated to wayward_spider hope its what u were thinking?? anyways u all can have five in the apocalypse. as a treat  
> (this is not the regularly scheduled thursday chapter bc its short, im jus explaining and setting up a few things >:) ) so? can anyone guess what happened for the apocalypse this time around?  
> come talk to me on [tumblr!](https://crystalrainwing.tumblr.com/)

What did dad know? What did _any_ of them know? He was _ready,_ he could do it. Five felt anger heat his face and his stomach and he slammed the doors open. He’d show them. 

Holding his hands out, he gathered his energy; pulled at the fabric of space - no, _time._ It felt different, wilder, sharper. He slipped through the portal he’d created, and _damn_ that hurt - just for a second, then nothing. It was hard, but he’d _done_ it. The sun was warmer, there were different people now. 

Five grinned. “Not ready, my ass!” He balled up his fists tighter and pulled _harder,_ launching himself forward - when he came through again, it was snowing. The store next to him, open just seconds ago, was now empty and had a ‘for lease’ sign. 

He was powerful, he was smarter than his father could ever dream of being. Numbers ran in his veins, calculations and variables worked out easy as breathing. He lived on math, and it let him do whatever he wanted. 

The numbers threaded through his fingers, through his blood, and they pulled him forward once again; this time almost catapulting him forward (could he have stopped if he tried? This question would haunt him for the rest of his life).

Something was wrong. The first thing Five felt was the ash, choking him, burning his throat and his exposed face. 

Something was wrong, no one was talking, it was too _quiet._ There was fire in the fallen stones and there was fire in his throat. 

Something was wrong. His numbers were gone, fled, abandoning him in Hell. His brain felt empty, he couldn’t feel the threads of time shifting around him. 

Five ran back down the street (so covered in stones that it was hard to tell what was sidewalk, and what used to be a building - it seemed like everything had been completely flattened, an endless expanse of burning bricks that went on forever). Surely his family could help him, help him find his way home, help the swirling emptiness of his mind. 

His home was on fire, the only place he’d ever known; the orange flames stretching towards the sky and every stone that had built it blasted away. (The center of the blast, his mind said, but his mind didn’t have what he needed so he snarled and pushed it away.) The only things left were stones from the roof, clearly having fallen down after the walls collapsed, and the gate that told him this _was_ the right place.

His family was fine, of course. They were fine. 

“Vanya!”

(She’d looked at him so pleadingly, begging him not to go. Why hadn’t he listened? She was dead she was dead she was _dead-)_

“Ben!”

(Ben had promised that after breakfast, he’d listen to Five’s numbers if Five would talk to him about his stories. He couldn’t break a promise, not to Ben.)

“Dad!”

(His father was invincible, unkillable. He’d be in there, and he’d yell at Five but Five was too useful to him so he’d help, he’d fix the burning in his throat and his eyes-)

But no one answered.

No. He could fix this. He had just time traveled! He could go back.

Blue wrapped his ash-burnt hands, but it didn’t _do_ anything. It just sat there, doing nothing no matter how hard he pushed. 

No, no, no no no _no-_

His eyes, they _hurt-_

And Five realized it wasn’t the heat, wasn’t the ash, but tears. 

He fell to his knees, heedless of his bare knees painfully bashing against the rough ground. Tears leaked from his eyes, clearing a slight bit of dust from his stricken face.

He didn’t want to go in, didn’t want his fragile hopes to be completely shattered. But Five was never one to give up, and he pushed himself to his feet. (Even now, he was too old for his body.)

The uneven, cracked stones made him trip and slip, cutting his knees and palms; Five was too far gone to notice. 

There was a hand, sticking out of the stones, covered in a black glove and limply holding something. Five gently pried the fingers away from a blood-covered object, wiping it off with his torn and dirtied fingers. An eye, torn from its owner.

God, he didn’t want to look at their face. He did anyways. He didn’t recognize the man under the rubble (yes he did _no he didn’t)._

But - there were more people, he could see them now.

A man, so covered in dust that half of him looked like a marble statue (he was as still as stone, Five thought hysterically that he might as well be) but when Five touched him, shook him, he didn’t move, didn’t breathe, _who was this why was he here where was his family -_

And there, just beyond him, a woman: she looked asleep, except for the unnatural position of her arms and the bricks covering her like a blanket. 

The stones shifted under Five’s feet as he scrambled to get away, _away_ from ~~his siblings~~ these strangers, but there was another, on his stomach like the second man, tattoos on his palm and one on his wrist and Five had known, he had _known_ but now he had to acknowledge it but maybe they were just fans but Luther Diego Allison Klaus (number order, would he be the fifth to die) but _no_ they were grown up they couldn’t _leave him_ like this - he could go _back_ he could _fix it_ but the numbers, they were gone -

He had to find the rest, maybe Ben, Vanya, and Jack were okay, and of _course_ Jack was okay! Oh God, Jack couldn’t be dead! Five let out a breathy half-laugh half-sob because Jack would have seen this, and he didn’t deserve that. He’d be hiding, of course, which would be why he didn’t respond. 

With ~~shattered~~ new hope Five searched for Jack’s form among the rubble, and there! Behind a stack of bricks, a golden feather. Five ran and didn’t care when he tripped because he’d have a friend, someone to help him, to tell him how to fix this; his little brother - big brother now - would know what happened. 

No. No. Why wasn’t he moving? Why was Jack just as covered in rocks and dust, his eyes open and unseeing and _afraid?_

Jack was invincible. 

Jack was dead. 

His skin was pale and Five quickly saw why; his throat had been slit open almost to the bone and blood coated in dust covered his chest and speckled his face.

How? Who had been able to kill all of them (where were Vanya and Ben)? 

_Whoever’s eye Luther was holding. It was them._

Five let the void of sorrow and sharp grief fill with rage, anger at whoever had done this. He would find them, he would _kill_ them, and he’d enjoy it. 

Stumbling through the rocks once again, he searched for his last two siblings. His two best friends.

There! A flash of pale skin, pale clothing. Vanya. 

She looked startled and afraid, tears clear on her cheeks where dust had stuck. Her brown hair was matted with rusty blood mixed with ash. 

Ben - he would be fine, the Horror would protect him. They were too powerful to be ruined by such a thing as rocks. 

He wasn’t anywhere in the rubble, and Five let a tiny bit of hope leak into his heart, just a tiny bit. Maybe Ben was safe in a city far, far away from here.

For now, he needed to bury his siblings. 

Five found a shovel in the back of a shop a ways away (the streets were too covered in bricks to be recognizable). Tears blurred his eyes as he moved stones from the area that used to be the courtyard, where he came across a bizarre statue head that he didn’t recognize. He dismissed it and piled it with the rest of the bricks. 

Eventually, the ground was clear enough to dig in. He was losing strength fast, and mentally apologized to his siblings as he dug a big, single grave. His hands dripped blood as he worked, staining the handle and the ground. 

Finally, it seemed deep enough to put all 6 of them in. (If Five jumped in himself, would anyone ever know? He wanted to, he wanted to. Anything would be 

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, he was sure it was at least a day or two but the light hadn’t changed at all with the sun invisible behind the ash and the fires lighting the world. Water hadn’t been too hard to find so far, with the restaurants close to their house; some of them had a kind of emergency water tank and he’d filled a canteen from there. 

The ash was getting to be too much, and he took a break to find new clothes. 

A department store, clothes covered in splinters and stones. He picked the thickest ones, found a scarf for his face and a hat to protect his burnt head and blistering ears. 

Among the ruins was - a person? Not surprising, but he’d check it out. He’d seen so many dead people that it didn’t bother him, and he needed as many clues as to the cause of the apocalypse as possible.

Not a person, not quite - but she talked to him, and he knew, he _knew_ that she wasn’t real, but Five brought her with him.

Finally, he went back.

He couldn’t cry, it would dehydrate him, so he let the pain feed his anger as he carefully uncovered his family’s bodies. 

There was a blurry spot in his memory after that, but suddenly he was standing over them all, Diego’s knife belt around his waist and a shovel in his hand. 

Hunger was gnawing at his insides, had been for days (could you really call it a day if there was no sun and no night?) but he had to finish this first.

With every shovelful of dirt that covered the faces of Five’s family, the only people who mattered, he added another brick to the wall around his heart. It would never be broken again. He wouldn’t let it.

At last, the grave was finished, and Five let himself collapse on top and sleep. If a few tears fell onto the freshly-dug dirt, no one was there to see.

The next day, he got up, he found something to eat, he talked to Dolores. His family rested heavily on his mind, following him like Klaus’s ghosts. He had to save them, but his quick and inherent knowledge of the math that dictated the world around him was gone, and he’d have to build it from the ground up.

It took awhile to find somewhere suitable to live, but the half-standing library was the closest thing there was to shelter - actually, it was the only standing or partially standing structure he’d found so far. What was different about it? That it was solid concrete, not bricks? It didn’t matter, because _this wouldn’t happen again._

Five got paint, gritted his teeth (oh, how literal gritting his teeth was now; the rock dust was inescapable) and set to work. The walls were alright for math, but he’d have to repaint eventually so he could continue. It didn’t really bother him.

Dolores reminded him to eat, sleep, drink something _other_ than alcohol, but she also talked to him and helped him with his math - she was the saviour of his life and his mind. 

She wasn’t a real replacement for people, though. 

She couldn’t make him forget, even for a second, the burden that rested upon his shoulders.

He was alone. 

Five was alone, and he felt numb and angry, and nothing else.

-*-

10th Spring

He wasn’t sure, anymore, if the cycles of seasons were years or not. They were so irregular, sometimes flipping so quick it left Five reeling. But he measured in seasons now, not years, so maybe it didn’t matter.

Nothing mattered, actually, except getting back and fixing this. Well, and Dolores. Their relationship was flourishing, and lately he’d found himself getting flustered when he was round her. He wasn’t sure what that meant, but it wasn’t unpleasant. It was a nice change from the numbness, at least.

This was the 10th spring since arriving in Hell on earth, and his siblings had died April 1st of 2019. So it had been 10 years, about, maybe. 

He made the yearly trek over to the fallen Academy, and there, as always, was the cleared patch of dirt that marked the grave. As plants had started to grow back, he’d gathered seeds of various types and buried them a little ways down, and they had grown quickly. Now, there were small yellow and bigger white flowers; in the summer there’d be more grass-like plants. 

The yellow reminded him of Jack’s eyes so he tried not to look at it too much. 

“Hey. It’s been ten years now. I think I’m getting closer to figuring out the equation from last year, so maybe I can go back soon and save your pathetic asses.”

His voice was cracked and dry-sounding from years of breathing the still-falling ash but he didn’t even know at this point. 

“When I’m around Dolores my stomach gets all fluttery and I feel excited but also panicked? What does that mean?”

He knew, now, why Ben hadn’t been there. He’d died long before the apocalypse had set in, and if only Five would have _been there_ maybe he wouldn’t have. 

Vanya had missed him, but from her book it sounded like the others had gotten over it pretty quick. Except Jack and Ben, maybe? Jack had gone on some weird dimensional trip/extended hallucination possibly to try and save him, apparently coming back covered in scars and bearing bizarre gifts.

God, it was ridiculous, but he felt _angry_ at Jack. How could he die, leave Five all alone? He got the easy way out. It wasn’t his fault, really, but Five still felt pissed at his little brother. Things could have been so much easier if he had help, and someone who could tell him the name of the person who caused the apocalypse.

If he didn’t hold onto anger, he fell into a spiral of depression and hopelessness, so he couldn’t let that go.

And so many years later, when he was finally back home, all the burning rage had become so much larger…. When Jack hugged him, he felt the love he had for his brother return fiercely along with the pain of being left behind, and Five didn’t know how to deal with that so he pushed him away, not even thinking of the consequences this could have on the youngest of the family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haha five youve made it worse :)  
> LET me tell u. five and jack are gonna have some issues. its gonna be really fun for me but i cant promise anything for them or you. theres some misunderstandings ahead arent there :)))  
> if u left a comment guessing the specific sequence of events that caused this version of the apocalypse i will be happy to confirm or deny it also i will be happy in general please leave comments  
> key things you may not have noticed if ur unobservant like me/stuff i probably didnt describe well:  
> -vanya’s dead.  
> -no buildings left standing (not even parts of buildings)  
> -hey now how did jack die??? its a mystery isnt it :)  
> -the academy is where the siblings are and five finds them right away, not later on  
> -the academy exploded outwards - the walls aren’t anywhere near and most of the siblings died by the upper floors collapsing on top of them  
> sorry for the kind of lame rambling chapter?? very unhappy with a solid 90% of it but i also dont know what to change <3 so this chapter may be heavily edited later/big chunks deleted!! just a heads up  
> tbh idk why i posted it early. i should edit it. hm. well see


	4. And I’m All Alone, All of the Way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every sibling has their own things to worry about, but they're also worrying about Jack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heyy so guess who realized they could project their own problems onto their favourite characters!! probably gave them all adhd agawgijlkw  
> anyways todays chapter lyric is from rowing song by patty griffin. u should listen to it?? while u read the chapter perhaps..??? lol

7 Days to the Apocalypse

After leaving Five to rest, Vanya was feeling a bit better. She still felt a little uneasy over what her older brother had said, and it was also weird how both Jack and Five had disappeared and had come back telling of a world full of nothing but pain. Both came back with an aura of deadliness, both too alert and nervous (even if Five didn’t show it as much). 

And both of them, it seemed, had imagined it all. So much pain for so little purpose…

It took a few seconds for Vanya to notice a strange sound, almost like a whine, and a few seconds longer to figure out where it was coming from.

Ben’s room.

Who would be in Ben’s room, especially so early?

She pushed the door open gently, and _oh. Of course. It’s Jack_.

He was curled on the floor, one wing held up above him as if to shield him from rain and his fingers twitching, held close to his chest. 

He was making the most _terrible_ sounds and Vanya hurt just hearing it, pathetic whimpers and choked-off sobs. 

“Hey, Jack…” She crouched down and gently ran her hand through his soft hair. He’d liked it when any of them would do that when they were kids, but being the forgotten one he hadn’t usually come to her for comfort so she only knew that from watching the others interact with him.

No, that wasn’t quite fair. Jack had done his best to include her, more than the others had at least. Still, though, he talked to her the least. 

(Who’d choose to talk to her? Ordinary, useless Vanya?)

“Jack,” Vanya said again, this time shaking his shoulder slightly. He gasped a stuttering breath and opened his eyes, pulling away from her. As he rolled over he twisted the wing that was on the ground and hissed in pain, quickly sitting up cross-legged.

“Hi, Vanya… what are you doing in here? I thought you didn’t like to be in Ben’s room?” _How would he know that… wait, fuck, the book._

“N-no, no, I usually don’t, but I think you were having a nightmare?”

He seemed to shrink into himself and looked away from her, twisting his hands together nervously. “Sorry,” he mumbled. 

“No, you don’t have to be sorry, why are you sorry?”

“Sorry for bothering you.”

Vanya winced at that, just a little. “It’s no bother.”

“Oh. Okay. I guess I’ll go have breakfast.” Before Vanya could say anything else, he pushed past her and out the door, fiddling with the ends of his long sleeves. His wings were held tight to his back, and to her, it looked like armor.

If only Jack could see that he was safe now, he didn’t need that anymore. It had been 15 years since he came back, and 15 years since he hadn’t looked scared.

Vanya took out her meds with shaking hands and swallowed one. 

-*-

Diego was going back to the house again, but only to see Mom. God, he hoped that his siblings were gone by now - probably not Luther, but the rest of them. The house was big enough to avoid anyone he didn’t want to see, i.e. everyone. 

But apparently, luck wasn’t on his side today. As he crept into the kitchen/hangout room, he almost got an eye taken out by a little origami bird. The room was full of them, floating through the air and flapping their tiny wings. In the corner, hovering on his stomach a few inches above the couch, was Jack. 

Jack, who hadn’t seen him yet, and who he didn’t really want to talk to. Jack was nice, probably the nicest and most easygoing of any of them, but Diego could not deal with him right now. He wasn’t good at emotions and stuff, and Jack was definitely having some problems that Diego just wasn’t going to be able to help with. Plus, he just wanted Mom. _Plus,_ Jack looked fuckin’ creepy as hell floating there with his eyes glowing and the cranes whipping around him like a colorful tornado, or maybe a swarm of fish. 

Yeah, now wasn’t the time to talk to Jack. He stepped away quietly so he could actually do what he came here for. 

Mom was in her room, and Diego didn’t run into any more of his siblings, so that was a tally for the ‘win’ side. (Win side of what? It’s not important.)

“Diego!” she said excitedly, standing up from her bed and walking over to him. “How lovely to see you!”

“Hey, mom,” he said gently, reaching down for a hug which she quickly gave him. “Good to see you too.”

“It’s been such a long time!”

Diego huffed a laugh. “Not really, Mom, but I guess a day with only Luther for company would feel like an eternity.”

“Silly! It’s been more than a day!” 

He felt dread start to pool in his stomach. “What do you mean?” 

She didn’t respond, instead grabbing his arm gently and pulling him along. 

“Where are we going?” 

“To make breakfast! Jack is waiting for it.”

_What the hell? How does she even know he’s in the kitchen?_

“Mom, do you know what day it is?”

“Of course I do!”  
“...What day is it?”

Mom gave him a bright smile, (such a familiar face, he hadn’t seen her in _so long,_ how could he leave her here) but that did nothing to soften the blow. “It’s Wednesday, silly.”

_It’s Monday._

“Ok, M-Mom.”

 _Something is wrong. Something is_ wrong. 

Diego didn’t say anything else. 

When they got to the kitchen, the birds had been replaced by swirling pieces of torn paper. Jack sat on the couch, a pile of untouched birds lying next to him as he ripped them until the pieces were too small to tear any more. He looked like something wild, something dangerous, and Diego’s instincts told him to run as fast as he could but this was his _brother._ Jack wouldn’t hurt his family, that much Diego was sure of. 

There weren’t many things that he knew for certain, but this was one of them. 

Mom didn’t seem bothered, just walking through the storm to the stove. Jack didn’t look at her, instead continuing his frantic and agitated paper-tearing. 

Diego was - well, he was torn. Like the paper that swirled around him and his brother, he couldn’t pick a direction and stick to it, his thoughts ripped down the middle.

He could try to help Jack the only way he knew how, by giving him comforting touches and trying to distract him, but that might make it worse. Sometimes when Jack was in a state like this it was best to just leave him alone. Without knowing what had triggered it, there was no way to tell which would be better.

(Plus, he just… didn’t want to deal with this today. He loved Jack, of course he did, but that didn’t mean he liked having to talk him out of his upset state. It was exhausting, and never-ending, and Diego thought he’d left this behind with the house. Hoped, too, that Jack would get some help on his own, would be able to heal. Apparently not.)

Diego went with option one. 

“Hey, bro.” He walked carefully through the paper storm and sat next to Jack on the opposite side of the bird pile. It wouldn’t help to try and stop him, he had to calm Jack first. Diego was pretty sure that when this happened, Jack wasn’t really present the way he would be normally, and until it was over he’d act and probably feel younger (back to when he disappeared? He’d never asked) and so he was way more sensitive. 

Diego took a deep breath (not that he needed it, hah) and gently placed his hand on Jack’s knee. When the only reaction was Jack slightly relaxing his shoulders he scooted closer and put an arm around his shoulders and let Jack lean on him.

“Hey, what’s going on?” Diego said softly. 

“I’m not a good person. I’m bad, Diego, all I do is hurt people.”

 _Fuck. Shit. This is gonna be a bad one._ “No, Jack. You’ve saved so many people, the only ones you hurt were, were hurting other people.”

“But _I_ was hurting other people!” All the paper floated to the ground as Jack dropped the last pieces of the one he was holding and pressed the heel of his hands to his eyes. “And I couldn’t even save Ben, it doesn’t even matter who else I saved because I couldn’t save Ben! And I couldn’t save Maggie or Mary or Charlie or Bobby, and what’s the point if I can’t save my family?” 

Jack started to cry a little, tears dripping down his face from behind his hands. 

“Hey, hey, n-no, you d-don’t blame yourself for B-Ben’s death, okay?” Diego took a deep breath and collected his thoughts, hoping that now, his words would come out right. “No one could have saved him, Jack. It was - it was bound to… bound to happen. We couldn’t have stopped it.” 

(Was that true? Diego wasn’t sure. For Jack, though, he could pretend.)

“It was Dad’s fault, bro. It wasn’t your fault for not being able to get to him in time, wasn’t Luther’s either. Not any of our faults, okay?”

“If you say so.” His voice is sad, quiet, and it makes Diego’s heart ache. 

He didn’t want to deal with this today. 

“Let’s get some breakfast.”

(Jack would act as if it was over, Diego knew, but he’d wouldn’t be able to think of anything else for days. Ben had told him once, before he got dragged off on a week-long mission with Luther and Allison. Diego had become Jack’s caretaker during that time, and plenty of times after.)

(Sometimes Diego had wished the responsibility fell to someone else. It was hard, watching Jack fall apart, and harder still to piece him back together.)

-*-

“Fuck off, Ben,” Klaus snarled. He was irritated and hungry and Ben was just so. Goddamn. Annoying. “Jack’s an adult, he can take care of himself.”

“No, Klaus, I know that, but he needs _help!”_

“I’ll help him when he _asks_ for help! Okay? Okay. Glad we’re all in agreement,” Klaus said loudly to keep his brother from getting a word in edgewise. 

“Klaus! Klaus! Klaaaaus! Klaus Klaus Klaus-”

“Would you _shut up!”_ Klaus yelled, whirling around to look at Ben. He just looked smug. 

“Not til you say you’ll check on Jack.”

Klaus let out a hysterical giggle. “Why don’t you check on him _yourself,_ octopus man?”

“I _did,_ while you were asleep. Don’t call me octopus man, ouija boy.” 

“Well, there you have it, Bennerino! Jack is all checked on!” Klaus said irritatedly.

“You helped _Five!_ And he’s not even nice, he’s a little shit, so _why_ won’t you help Jack? Just - just 10 minutes, Klaus.”

“Five said he was going to _pay_ me!” Klaus threw his hands into the air as he spoke. “ _Maybe_ if you weren’t so _fucking annoying,_ Ben, I’d check on him on my _own!”_

“You wouldn’t, cause you’re selfish! You’re a selfish asshole!” Ben was seething now, and if he’d still been alive, his face might have been red. No blood, though, which kind of made it look funny. No matter how funny he looked right now, though, his words hurt. 

“Yeah, see how far your ‘selflessness’ gets you on the streets, Ben,” Klaus sneered, narrowing his eyes. “If you were still alive, no way would you check on Jack. You would’ve tried to get away from that house, just like me, just like all of us! And you would’ve forgotten him.”

“Don’t say that,” Ben said quietly, and Klaus knew now that he’d crossed a line, but _so had Ben._ So he didn’t regret it. (Or maybe he just didn’t want to admit to himself that that was going too far.)

“I only tell the truth, Benny,” and with that, Klaus walked away from him. Ben didn’t follow.

Klaus knew that eventually they’d both go back to the ( _stupid fucking)_ house, (the house where everything had gone wrong), meet up, pretend this never happened. He also knew that neither of them would forget.

And it wasn’t like he didn’t want to check on Jack! Just not right now. He loved Jack, really, who didn’t, but Klaus was still pissed that Five had left without paying him. (Maybe Ben had bothered him a little, too, not that he’d admit it to himself. He wasn’t not talking to Jack out of _spite._ No. For sure.) He’d smashed a _snow globe_ on his _head_ for Five, and he gets nothing. Not even half, hell, a _quarter_ of what the gremlin had offered. Surely Five could spare a few dollars. Fucking prick.

Who cares about the apocalypse? Klaus had been stumbling through life halfway dead since the ghosts had started to scream. And they had always been screaming. 

-*-

Fucking _hell,_ Allison missed Claire. It felt like she was being _stabbed, all the time._ So much worse now that she was so far from her little girl. 

And what did Vanya know? Nothing. She didn’t know _shit._ She couldn’t even keep a good relationship with their _siblings,_ for Christ’s sake. Thought that they weren’t even a _family._ How would she know?

_Better off here. As if._

None of them knew anything.

Allison took a deep breath, trying to calm down. _This isn’t going to help anything. This is exactly the kind of stuff that’s keeping you from seeing her, get it_ under control, _Allison._

Control, though… was exactly what had caused the problems before. Not enough of it herself, and too much over everyone else. 

Over Claire. 

_Something scratched at her memory, begging to be let out._

_Vanya, small and scared._

_Jack, asking over and over about… something…_

_Allison herself rumoring them both…_

_What had it been about?_

Almost without thinking, Allison headed up to the attic. She used to go the way that went past Ben (and Jack) and Five’s rooms, but… not since… well. Maybe it didn’t matter now if she passed Five’s room, he was back. 

_No he wasn’t, not really. Not the Five she knew, not the brother she missed. He was so cold now, and so angry._

Jack, too. It had been so long since she’d seen him, and such a huge shock to see him show up for the funeral. 

In contrast to Five, he seemed to have hardly changed at all. Didn’t seem to have grown much older, mentally or physically. He was just more scared. 

What could do that to a person?  
Did she really want to know?

No _, Allison, that’s a bad thing to think. Of course you want to know. We want to help him, right? If we can’t even_ ask _about what happened to Jack, how can we ever be trusted with Claire?_

God. She was done thinking about this. It was a problem for tomorrow’s Allison, and today’s Allison was going to forget about it. 

She lit a cigarette and climbed onto the windowsill. It was a nice view from up here. Maybe not so much during the day, but at night… 

Allison wasn’t sure how long she was up there before Pogo came in, and then she was looking through the tapes, and there was one from the day Dad died.

She grabbed it and popped it in, fully expecting it to be just what Diego and the coroner’s report said - a heart attack. Maybe she kind of just wanted to watch the man who destroyed her childhood and that of her siblings die. Maybe she wanted to put any suspicion to rest. Allison wasn’t really sure what she’d been thinking, because it was gone now. 

Mom just  _ watched,  _ not even watched, she  _ left,  _ as Dad died, and Allison knew, had seen a thousand times, that Mom was programmed to help anyone who was hurt. Why would she leave him?

It didn’t make any  _ sense, it didn’t make any SENSE!  _ This was her mom, who’d helped her up when she fell and made her cookies and who had been one of the only two adults in her life that cared for her. 

This was her mom, who was a robot, who her horrible father had programmed, who had been left alone in a big empty house away from her children. Maybe it was no surprise that she’d finally snapped. 

Thinking back on it, Mom had been acting weird the other day at the funeral, too. She’d been confused, saying weird things. 

Something was wrong. 

And fuck, but something was wrong with Jack as well. Not in a bad way, not for either of them  _ probably,  _ though Mom might have killed Dad. 

But if she’s judging on having  _ killed  _ people, then the only innocent person of any of them is Vanya. And her sweetest, kindest two brothers would be the most guilty. 

Even though Ben had had the highest body count, after Jack came back he became vicious when it came to the criminals they fought. It was terrifying, but also it was Jack, so mostly she realized how fucked up it was when she got older and looked back on it. 

Poor Jack, with his made-up stories and his body covered in scars, her little brother who flinched at loud noises or when people moved too fast. Her brother whose eyes would glaze over when he saw his hands covered in blood, wouldn’t seem to see the world around him at all until someone helped ground him in reality. 

Poor Jack, who never had anyone help him, because he pushed everyone but Ben away. He didn’t  _ seem  _ like the type to push away people who supported him, but she was pretty sure it was because he thought he was a burden. 

Which he was, but so is everyone. That’s what love is about - taking care of someone even when it’s trouble for you, and them doing the same. Jack had taken care of them, but no one had taken care of him. 

(Ben had, but Ben was dead now. Had Jack been alone, with no support, for fourteen years? She couldn’t imagine him reaching out to someone new. Fuck.)

Maybe that should change now. 

Maybe Allison could show to Jack and Vanya both that she loved them, she wanted to help them. 

She wasn’t really mad at Vanya, couldn’t stay angry at her smallest, quietest sibling for long. Vanya had made a mistake (had made many, but right now Allison was mostly thinking about what her sister had said earlier and not the book or anything else), but so had she, so had they all, in blocking her out when they were kids. 

_ You can’t blame everything on Dad.  _

Maybe it was time for Allison to take some of her own advice. To finally, after years of dismissing them, listen to Vanya and Jack, her quietest siblings. 

Right now, though, in this very moment, it was time to talk to her favourite brother, her best friend. Luther would know what to do about this, he’d been with Mom after they left. He could tell her if this was caused by some update to Mom’s software. 

(Allison knew, somewhere deep and hidden in her mind, that this wasn’t a bug. Something was going on here, and the only explanation could be that Mom had done it.

She shoved that down, boxed it up, hid it so she wouldn’t have to think about it again.)

(Sometimes that’s all you can do, but boxes don’t hold together forever. They’re bound to fall apart someday.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is this chapter coherent? probably not.  
> am i going to post it without editing anyways? yes.  
> is everyone in character? idk. oops.  
> sorry for all the pov switches 😔  
> anyways as always comments feed my void of a soul. thanks for reading, hope u like it ashwpeiweginj and if u want u can follow me on [tumblr](https://crystalrainwing.tumblr.com/)  
> p.s. sorry my notes are always so long i literally cant shut up awigjewige  
> p.p.s. its still thursday for me. it counts aghjklw;aew  
> ppps klaus has anger issues here that’s why he’s a jerk. he doesn’t in canon but he’s a little different here, he’s klaus slightly to the left. he loves jack and i PROMISE he will be comforting him soon <333


	5. Our Temple, Your Tomb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack helps a stranger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW this chapter for past self harm, i.e. scars. starts at ‘The only problem was that the shirt was short-sleeved.’ and ends at ‘He grabbed the biggest one (a light grey) and pulled it on.’  
> time for me to put in a few more of my fav spn characters <3  
> *hypnotizing voice* ignore the giant plot hole... ignore the giant plot hole... it still couldve happened w/o jack there...  
> (remember that jack looks 16-18 and honestly acts like it too. since he acts like he does in spn hes still babey tbh)

Some Years Ago (Exact Date Unknown. Sometime Between 2015 and 2018)

Jack’s feet pounded against the dirt as he ran, and if he had been anyone else, it probably would have hurt. He could have flown, but that would have defeated the whole purpose. This was unfamiliar terrain, the trees towering and huge and everything too green. 

His feet slipped on the unstable ground, and Jack hit the ground hard. Without enough time to catch himself properly, his knees and hands were swallowed in the mud. He scrambled to get back on his feet as the slippery dirt kept him from gaining traction. Thundering footsteps shook the earth and Jack along with it. 

He didn’t have time to look back, to see how closely he was being chased. He set off again, weaving between trees and splashing over shallow creeks. Everywhere Jack looked, the colors were off. He looked at his skin and it was the color of mold, he looked at the ground and it was the color of the sea. Blue-green hung over everything like an omen, but of what, Jack didn’t know. Everything was dead silent aside from his own breath, the sound of the footsteps of the thing following him, and the splashes of his feet in the mud and the water. 

Movement in the bushes, but no sound with it. 

Eyes in the treetops that never blinked and followed his every movement. 

Jack fell again, this time his feet going out from under him so he fell flat on his back. The breath was knocked from his lungs, and he blinked dizzily at the sky.

Surely it must’ve been hours by now, but the sky was as dark as it had been since he got here. It never changed. Jack didn’t know why it would’ve changed in the time he’d been running when it had been the same for days. 

The trees around him didn’t have any branches this low down, the lowest ones over a hundred feet in the air. 

Nowhere to hide. 

Through the fuzz in his ears Jack could still hear the footsteps growing closer. Or maybe it was just the vibration coming through the ground. His teeth clicked together with each thud. He’d bitten his tongue, tasted blood. He spit it on the ground, but the metallic aftertaste remained. 

_ Ben had cried whenever he got blood in his mouth from opening it by accident while the Horror was on a rampage. Jack hadn’t, after killing someone with his own powers. Sometimes, he’d felt that it was a mark of a job well done.  _

_ Too torn apart to be anything but the taste of lifeblood. Utterly defeated.  _

_ (Maybe, when he’d been younger, he had cried. After everything that happened, though… he’d do anything to protect his family. If giving up his morals was what it took, then so be it.) _

Maybe the monster could smell blood, a shark. 

_ Did you know that humans can smell rain more acutely than a shark can smell blood?  _

The rain here was constant, but faint. It dripped from the leaves and stuck to his skin. White pebbles dotted the ground and they looked like teeth. 

Jack had torn out someone’s throat with his teeth once. Not on a mission, no, after he moved out.  _ Moved out only in the most general sense of the term.  _ The person had been about to grab a child (eyes wide open tears about to fall pale blue shirt with a cartoon dog) and he’d knocked them over and bitten out their throat. 

The girl’s shoes had been stained on the bottom, Jack’s face and shirt coated in the same blood that seeped into her socks. Apex predator, unkillable boy. 

If he was caught now, would he still be top of the food chain? He wouldn’t stay down for long. 

Jack pushed himself up, standing now and covered in mud. It crackled a little as he moved. What color had these clothes been? He wasn’t sure. 

He kept running. A bush, he jumped over it, but it was on the edge of a pit and he fell again. Not a pit, a giant footprint. Of the thing chasing him? Maybe. Hopefully not. 

He placed his hands on the edge, pulled himself up. Rested in a crouch for a minute or two, catching his breath. Had it been long enough? Hard to tell. Jack’s sense of time had always been a little warped, he could spend hours sitting and looking at the rain or would feel that it had been much longer than it really had. 

_ Ben used to tell him how long it had been.  _

It had been long enough, probably. The monster wouldn’t be able to follow him after he flew away. Too far, too far for you to catch. 

He spread his wings and let them carry him back to the place he’d started. Not the place he’d arrived, no, the place he’d been looking for. 

The home of the girl that he felt the strange tug towards. For some reason, she seemed familiar, even though he knew they’d never met. She wasn’t a regular girl even by other’s standards.

She was hiding, but he knew she was there. 

The roof of her shelter wasn’t quite tall enough for Jack to fit under, so he crouched down to look through the entrance at her. In the corner was a tree trunk, and she was hiding there. 

He lifted up one hand in greeting. “Hello.”

She crept out of her hiding spot, holding a sharp and clearly homemade knife. Her clothes were torn and dirty, but not as badly as his. 

“Who are you?” Her voice was barely above a whisper. 

“I’m Jack.”

“Are you going to hurt me?”

_ He’d hurt so many people, but always to protect someone else. Did that make it okay?  _

“No.” 

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Why are you here?”

“I don’t know.” He really didn’t, that wasn’t a lie. He was the one who opened the portals, but he wasn’t the one who decided where they went. Usually though he would arrive somewhere that had something he could help with, and he’d never had a problem getting home. 

She scoffed at that. “That’s a fucking lie. I didn’t think there were any other humans here. Are you human?”

“I don’t know,” Jack said again. 

“How do you  _ not know?”  _

“I never knew my parents,” he responded softly, thinking of the memories he had of his mother’s and father’s voices. He had a thousand stories of his father, and a hundred from his mother, but he didn’t know either of them. 

Her eyes softened almost imperceptibly. “How did you find me, then? Nothing or, I guess, nobody else has come here. Well, to my place, I mean”

Jack hesitated. “I just knew.”

She glared at him again. 

“But, uh, I can tell you’re not supposed to be here. I can take you home,” Jack said hurriedly, before she could say anything.

For a second, her eyes widened and lit up with hope, but just as quickly she put up walls again. “It’s impossible.”

_ What?  _ “No, it isn’t.” 

She crossed her arms across her chest defensively. “Well tell me, then, how are you gonna get me back?”

Jack figured it’d be easier to just go for it at this point, and concentrated on opening a rift. He could sense the place where the girl (what was her name? Had he asked? Would it be weird to ask, in case he already did?) came from, since she was so close to him. He knew it had worked when she let out a strangled gasp.

“What is that? Where did it come from?” she asked shakily. 

Jack tilted his head slightly. “It’s a rift. If you go through, it should take you back to your world.” 

“Full offense, but why would I trust you?”

Jack blinked at her. “I never lie.”

The girl sighed. “Thank you so much, I am so glad, I now trust you with my life.”

“Okay?”

“That was sarcastic, dumbass.”

Jack paused for a second. “Oh, okay. Well, do you want me to go through first?”

“Sure, that works.”

She watched carefully as Jack stepped through, and then he couldn’t see her anymore but instead he was standing on an empty street in the middle of the night. A moment later the girl appeared next to him. 

“Oh, holy shit, that’s Jody’s house…” she breathed. 

“Who’s Jody?”

Without looking at him, she said, “Oh, she’s this… hunter lady, she’s kind of the adopted mom of one of… my friends…” and then she was running towards the door, pressing the doorbell again and again. 

After a moment, Jack could hear an irritated voice and footsteps coming towards the door. “Alright, alright, I’m coming!”

A light blinked on inside, and the door opened to reveal the silhouette of a person. They stepped out, and now Jack could see them better - a woman with short hair. She saw the girl, stopped, then grabbed her in a fierce hug. “Kaia, Kaia, how are you here? I thought you were dead! Oh, my god, CLAIRE!” 

So the girl’s name was Kaia. She was sobbing now, clinging to the woman - Jody - like she would die if she didn’t. 

Well, this was the first friendly face she’d seen in who knows how long. When Jack had gotten home, he’d been excited too. 

The difference here was that her friends would believe her, probably. Jody gave off an air of knowing things, the same way the hunters in the other world had. 

Another person appeared at the doorway, and Kaia and Jody broke apart and the new person - Claire? - grabbed Kaia into another hug. Both of them were crying and after a moment they sat down on the stairs. 

Moments like these were what kept Jack going, again and again to new worlds to help strangers. 

He was just about to step back through the portal when Jody came towards him. “Kaia, who’s this guy? Is he with you?”

Kaia wiped her eyes and said in a congested-sounding voice, “Yeah, he brought me back.”

Jack stood stock-still as Jody came closer. “Who’re you, then, kiddo?”

He held up one hand. “Hello.” He paused for a second, considering her question. “I’m Jack.”

Jody was quiet for a minute, looking at him expectantly. He wasn’t sure what she wanted. When he didn’t say anything else she continued to talk. “Well… do you want to come inside? And we can talk there?” 

Jack nodded and followed her as she went back inside the house, Claire and Kaia following just behind. The lights were bright and he could see now how dirty he was, but he was beyond caring by now. Besides, Kaia wasn’t looking squeaky clean herself, and neither of them had said anything. 

Jody went and grabbed something, and a moment later she splashed water on his face. Maybe he was too dirty? This didn’t seem like the most efficient way to keep him from getting dirt in the house, though. 

She reached out a hand towards him. “Can I have your hand for a minute, uh, Jack?”

He placed his scarred, dirty hand in her scarred, clean one. She pulled out a short knife and he jerked it back, hiding his hands behind his back. “Please don’t, please don’t, please don’t,” he said breathlessly, feeling tears prick his eyes. 

“I’m not gonna hurt you. Just have to touch you with it.”

Jack took a shaky breath and tentatively reached his hand out again. She gently placed the flat side of it against his palm, and tucked it back into her jacket. 

Jody led him further into the house, gesturing for him to sit on a wooden chair in the dining room. “So, how did you get Kaia back here? What are you? And why did you help her?”

“I just opened a rift. I don’t really know but someone said I’m a nephilim? Half angel half human? But I never met my parents. I helped her because I wanted to. Why did you bring me inside? I can just leave.” He shifted uncomfortably. Had he said too much? But he didn’t want to  _ lie.  _

“No, no, you don’t have to leave. So how come we’ve never heard of you? The Winchesters said there were no nephilim left…” Jody mused, looking thoughtful. 

“I’m not from here.”

“...Where are you from?” 

“My world.”

“How  _ fantastically  _ informative,” a new voice said from behind him, and Jack startled. 

“Claire, don’t be rude. He just saved Kaia, remember?” Jody said irritatedly. 

“Okay, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t, like, bad. Come on, Jody, you’re a hunter, you know this shit.”

Footsteps signaled Kaia’s arrival and she stood next to Claire. “He’s not bad, he just… helped me for no reason. He doesn’t seem like he wants to hurt anyone.”

Jack put his hands over his ears; even this gentle arguing was overwhelming for him right now. 

“Oh, uh, sorry kiddo, are you okay?” Jody said, and Claire and Kaia both stopped talking.

He bit his lip and nodded. 

“Well, uh, do you need anything…?” 

He’d gone so long without sleep, he was so  _ tired,  _ and he missed his family so, so much. “I want Ben,” he choked out, and then he started to cry. 

Claire looked uncomfortable, Kaia looked sad, but Jody pulled him into a hug. “Shh, it’s gonna be okay, kiddo.”   
Jack just shook his head. 

She patted his back a few times, dried mud crunching under her hand. 

“D’you want to take a shower, or something?” she said cautiously. “We might have something that would fit you.” 

He nodded and stood up. She pointed towards a door he assumed was the bathroom and he stepped past Kaia and Claire to go in. Jack quickly took a shower and then dried himself off, carefully avoiding the mirror. He didn’t want to see his scars. 

Jody knocked on the door. “I’m going to leave some clothes just outside the door, okay? And you can just grab them whenever you’re done.” He waited until her footsteps retreated before quickly opening the door and snatching the clothes, then re-locking it. It felt weird, but nice, to have clean clothes. His hair was getting long, almost falling to his shoulders now. The last time it had been cut was… when Vanya had done it. Jack wasn’t sure how long ago that had been.

The only problem was that the shirt was short-sleeved. His arms felt weird being exposed to open air, and he itched to cover up the scars. 

Because on his arms were not just battle scars, but rows upon rows of straight-across lines that layered over both the outside and the inside of his wrists. The idea of someone seeing them, even a virtual stranger, made him want to hide in a dark corner and never leave. He wrapped a towel over his shoulders and held the ends tightly, wrapping it around himself like a blanket. This felt much more familiar, safer.

Jack poked one hand out to crack open the door before nudging it the rest of the way open with his foot. 

Jody, Claire, Kaia, and two other girls he didn’t know were in the dining room, talking and laughing. Claire and Kaia kept looking at each other and grinning, and Jody would look at them looking at each other and smile a little herself. 

At home, no one had talked at dinner. Luther and Allison would send each other looks, but Dad wouldn’t get mad at Luther. It would be dead silent except for whatever record Dad had chosen. 

~~ The only time the silence had been broken was when Five demanded answers about time travel. ~~

For just a second, Jack saw his own family overlayed on top, chatting and stealing each others’ food and pushing each other lightly. 

But it was just five strangers. He was the outsider, looking in from the shadowed hallway. Maybe this was what Vanya had felt like. 

Easier to just take a shirt or jacket from one of their rooms than to ask. He silently padded down the hallway into what looked like Claire’s room and flipped on the light. There were a few hoodies, but they looked kind of small. He grabbed the biggest one (a light grey) and pulled it on.

Much better. 

Wandering down the hall, Jack stepped out into the light of the dining room. Their talking stopped suddenly, and he felt dread and guilt knot up in his stomach. 

“Who is that?” one of the new girls, who had dark hair and scars on her neck, asked Jody quietly. 

Claire leaned back in her chair, almost tipping it (but Jack saw that she didn’t let go of Kaia’s hand), and said “We’re not really sure. He  _ says  _ he rescued Kaia, and he’s not a demon or a shifter, but we don’t really know if he’s actually good.”

Jack let out a tiny, involuntary whimper at that. He  _ wasn’t  _ good, he  _ wasn’t,  _ but he was trying to be. Would it ever be enough to make up for the things he’d done?

Jody glared at Claire before turning to Jack. “Do you want to sit down, tell us what’s going on?” 

He nodded jerkily and started rubbing the ends of the sleeves between his fingers as he sat down. It helped keep him from twitching or bouncing, which he didn’t like doing in front of people.

“So, do you want to just tell the girls what you’ve told me? Recap, so we’re all on the same page,” Jody prompted gently.

“My name is Jack Hargreeves, I am a nephilim, I save people sometimes. I can open portals between worlds. This isn’t my native world,” he said with a mostly-flat voice, avoiding eye contact. He felt so incredibly uncomfortable, why was he even here? They probably all hated him anyways. 

One of the two girls whose names he didn’t know said, “So what’s your native world? Where’s your family, you look too young to be out on your own.”

_ I’m older than you. I’m older than you, but I don’t feel like it.  _ “It’s, um, it’s not here. I don’t know how else to say it? It’s pretty much the same, I think.” How do you even describe  _ your world  _ when as far as you can tell, it’s the same? Or, well - “Except there’s no monsters.”

The neck-scar girl’s eyebrows shot up. “No monsters? None at all?”

He kept his eyes on the ground and shook his head. 

Claire’s louder voice cut through the thoughts swirling in his head like glittering snow _ (cold and scattered, melting when he tried to think any harder).  _ “You’re a monster, though.”

_ I know, I know.  _

“Claire, show a little politeness, Jesus. You wouldn’t call Castiel a monster, would you?”

_ Castiel, Castiel, Castiel… his father, not his father. The last time he’d met his father, a version of him anyways, it had ended with Jack holding a silver knife and ashy wings burnt into the ground.  _

“Well, not to speak ill of the dead, but he did  _ kill my dad.”  _

Jody winced. “Okay, not the best example. You get the idea, though. The kid isn’t a monster.” 

Claire glared at Jody and then Jack before dropping her eyes to the ground. After a second, her gaze snapped back up to him again. “Hey, what the fuck? Is that my hoodie? Jody, did you give him  _ my _ fucking hoodie?”

“No, I  _ didn’t,  _ but if he grabbed it I think we can forgive him. Jack, did you take Claire’s hoodie?”

Jack felt tears pricking his eyes, but he pushed them back. “Yes.”

Claire’s eyes turned even harder, which he wouldn’t have even thought possible. “Give it back, angel boy.”

He hugged his arms around his middle protectively. “I don’t want to.” 

She stood up, but Jody put out an arm to stop her from coming any nearer to Jack. “Leave him alone, Claire, he’s just a kid and he helped Kaia.”

“Fuck off, Jody! We don’t know him, we don’t know if he wants to hurt us! You can’t just let people into the house, you’re gonna get killed!” She threw her hands into the air as she spoke, almost slapping Jody in the face. 

“No, Claire, I’m not going to get killed, because I am careful. Unlike some people I might name,” Jody said, her voice calm but cold as ice. 

Claire narrowed her eyes and turned away from Jody and back towards Jack. “So,  _ Jack,  _ if that’s even your real name, what do you want here? Information? The Winchesters?”

He shook his head, agitated. “No, I didn’t even mean to stay here, I can leave! I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” His voice broke and he once again pushed down tears. 

Jody yelled something at Claire but he didn’t know what, and she yelled back, and this was  _ too much  _ for him, he couldn’t stay here another  _ second -  _

So he let his wings loose (not in a way they could see) and flew - away. Just away. Which turned out to be in the middle of a forest, somewhere where the sun was actually up. He let the tears slip down his cheeks and waved his hand halfheartedly to open a rift. 

He stepped through. 

There were always more things he could help with. 

~~ Would he ever be free? Could he ever make up for everything he’d done?  ~~ _~~Was there any good left in him, or would he always be the one people were afraid of?~~ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hmm. bit of a bummer chapter i guess. sorry. and sorry that its late lol im not exactly doing great rn, writing this did help tho lol. i make my fav characters sad and i am less sad <3 anyways im struggling w the next one so it may be 2-3 weeks before its out, i just dk what to write. ideas appreciated haha.  
> if u noticed anything blatantly out of character or incorrect pls shout at me on [tumblr!](https://crystalrainwing.tumblr.com/)  
> also edited the last chapter cause i kind of hate it especially allisons section. i think its better now and makes more sense.  
> comments n kudos greatly appreciated but ofc u dont have to ashdgkfljnejwgir happy valentines day!!


	6. I Don't Sing My Songs, I Bleed Them

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack gets a little comfort. But nothing good lasts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK SO i was not intending to this chapter to be as dark as it is. or as long. i'm very sorry.  
> i genuinely have no clue what to warn for here but i have updated the tags so check that out. just about every warning tag in the whole thing applies this chapter. so. if you'd like to just ask for a chapter summary instead, just leave a comment and i'll type that up for you :) stay safe!! <3  
> also HUGE shoutout to [Wayward_Spider](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wayward_Spider) they wrote something for the story!! go check it out it's awesome!! link [here.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29987304/chapters/73827894) it really helped with my inspiration and i ended up with at least 1,000 extra words cause of that. <33333  
> 

_ Jack is our youngest brother, and he acted like it most days. He was always bouncy and excited, thrilled by the smallest things and crying over even smaller inconveniences. I remember once when he came into my room late at night and put a smushed flower crown on my head, the yellow dandelions matching his golden wings. We must’ve been 11 or 12 but he still behaved like a little kid.  _

_ “Do you like it, Vanya? Do you like it?” he asked me with excitement in his face, bouncing up and down and flapping his hands in front of him happily. It was the first time that day that any of my siblings had talked to me.  _

_ …  _

_ After he came back, Jack was different. Gone was the innocence from before, his easy laughter and tears. Sometimes at night I’d walk by his room on my way to put a sandwich in Five’s and I’d hear him crying, screaming, hitting the walls. Once I opened the door to hopefully comfort him and he was sweeping the books off his night table and throwing them around, his eyes glowing bright gold.  _

_ He turned towards me and his teeth were bared like he was going to bite my throat out, and I was afraid because I knew that he had done it before. Some missions he came back with blood crusted on his face and hands and the taste of rust on his tongue. When he saw me, though, his eyes faded back to their normal dark blue, and he slumped forward like his strings had been cut.  _

_ The strings controlling all of us, though, belonged to my father, and I knew that Jack wasn’t free. He just had no support.  _

_ With nothing holding him up, he had nothing holding him back. _

_ I stood outside his door, looking in, for a moment longer, but when he didn’t say anything I closed it quietly.  _

_ Jack’s spiral into darkness paralleled Klaus’s in a thousand ways, but while Klaus became less ‘useful’ on missions and became non confrontational (even more than he was already) and withdrawn, Jack turned into something terrifying. I’m sure that Dad was happy with the change, with his newly-turned-killer boy under his complete control… but the rest of us not so much. It was then, more than ever, that Jack and Ben grew closer - two kindhearted killers forced to do things that made their hands shake in the night as they ran their fingers under hot water for hours trying to clean off invisible blood. _

_... _

_ I never did know exactly what happened to Ben. I got the basics, what the rest of my siblings were willing to share (not very much, as it happens, but enough to understand). The only person who really knows is Jack. He was there. _

_ This was the worst thing that could’ve happened to him. He didn’t come out of his room until the funeral, and then… he didn’t say anything. He let the snow cover him and the tears freeze on his face. _

_ I haven’t seen him since. I don’t know if he’s still alive. I choose to believe that he is, even though that would mean he abandoned me.  _

_ I can’t take another lost brother.  _

  * _Extra Ordinary: My Life as Number Seven, by Vanya Hargreeves_



6 Days Until The Apocalypse

Jack rubbed his eyes to clear the blurriness, making sparks swirl in his vision. He was on the couch, too weary to go anywhere else after Diego had eaten with him. He’d lain there for the rest of the day, thinking and daydreaming, before he finally fell asleep. 

Luther and Allison were down here, talking to each other in quiet voices and eating the breakfast mom had made them. Jack blinked a few more times to bring the world into focus. His siblings didn’t seem to have noticed him yet, and he sat up and quietly stepped over to the table. He pulled out a chair and sat down, startling Luther a little.

“Oh, uh, hey, Jack,” he said gently. He was so big, like a bear maybe, but instead of being scary Jack felt safe around Luther. His brother wouldn’t hurt him, wouldn’t hurt any of them. 

Sometimes, Jack was afraid that he’d hurt his family, that he’d lose control. When he was little, before… before, he’d always had perfect control. But after he came back, sometimes his thoughts got all mixed up and he felt like he was somewhere else. Usually the only person damaged by that was him. 

If he was on a mission, though… other people got caught in the crossfire. Not always, but enough. 

The thing that scared Jack the most was the idea that he might hurt the people he loved. They’d never hurt him, and he wished he could say the same. 

“Jack, are you okay?” Allison said, leaning over the table to look around Luther at him. 

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“You look really… sad. Is something wrong?”

_ Yes, yes, yes, there’s a hundred things wrong,  _ “No. I’m okay.” He gave her a weak smile which she returned, hers a little sadder than his. “Can I have some breakfast, too?”

“Oh, yeah, yes, of course!” Luther said hurriedly, and turning to Mom he said, “Hey Mom, can you make something for Jack?”

Mom smiled widely and cracked another two eggs into the frying pan. “Of course, dear!” Her movements were a little strange, a little jerky. Then again, Jack moved oddly too. He always felt too alert, too aware, flinching at things seen from the corner of his eye and sounds that no one else was ever concerned about. When he was traveling and rescuing people from terrible things, it was useful. 

But in between, he felt off-kilter. 

Maybe the rest of his family felt that way, too. Unbalanced in their own unique ways. Jack thought it was likely, because it had been like that even before he went looking for Five. He’d seen the other’s faces when they came back from special training.

Even Luther, who  _ still  _ thought that Reginald had been kind, and good, and trying his best, would pick at his food after his training. He always looked pained, and it was always gone by the next day. 

Klaus, for sure. He seemed to have embraced it, accepted it. Maybe that was better, maybe it wasn’t. He pushed everyone around him off balance, too. If they weren’t able to focus, they couldn’t pay too close of attention to him.

Or at least that’s what Jack thought it might be. Who knew. Not him. He was stupid, fucking stupid, stupid, useless, worthless - 

“Here you go, sweetie!” Mom slid a plate with two eggs and a single piece of bacon on it over to him, snapping him out of his spiraling thoughts. After a moment he realized that the food was arranged in a smile.

Luther and Allison kept shooting him looks, but he didn’t turn his head so he wasn’t sure what their faces looked like. Maybe they were mad at him because he disturbed their alone time. Probably, yeah.

Jack carefully cut his eggs into pieces with the side of his fork before eating them. Most everyone else he’d ever met cut each bite off and then ate it, but he liked it to be ready to eat first. 

It tasted great. Mom always cooked their food exactly how they each liked it, so Jack’s eggs were slightly saltier than his siblings’ and had no pepper. He’d forgotten that. Almost half his life, now, had been spent away from his family and this house. Oh, it  _ was  _ half his life, maybe a little more, because he’d spent a year looking for Five.

He shook his head to get rid of the thought, and went back to his food.

-*-

Jack was sitting in the library, reading, when Klaus peeked into the room. “Jack! Hey, Jacky, how are ya doing?” he said cheerfully, flopping into the chair across from his brother. Jack put down his book carefully and slipped a piece of paper in as a bookmark.

“I’m good,” he said, giving Klaus a small smile. “How’re you?”

“Weeeell, if you must know, I am great! Ich bin gut, mein kleiner Bruder, isn’t that funny? See, cause your last name is - is Kline, right? And klein - you know, it sounds about the same, but it means  _ small,  _ and you are! Small, I mean,” Klaus rambled, moving his hands through the air as he spoke.

Jack blinked at him and his smile became more genuine. “I’m not  _ that  _ small. I’m taller than Five, and Vanya too.”

Klaus waved a hand dismissively. “Five’s not even fully grown, and  _ everyone’s  _ bigger than Vanya.” When Jack went to say something, Klaus cut him off. “So really, how are you doing? Ben’s really worried about you.” He’d dropped his smile and looked unusually serious, putting his elbows on the table to lean forward and look at Jack.

Jack looked away uncomfortably. “Ben shouldn’t be worrying about me.”

Klaus’s eyebrows creased in concern. “See, that’s not really an answer, Jack. It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about what’s going on, I can tell it’s something though, and I just want to know if there’s anything I can do to help.” His eyes were wide, earnest, sincere in a way that he wasn’t often. Klaus, Jack knew, hid himself behind a thousand layers of cheerfulness and jokes. It was unusual for him to be so open. 

That, more than anything, was what prompted Jack to not respond with another deflection. “Can you just - uh… I don’t know…” He felt silly asking, but well, Klaus wasn’t really one to judge. He had always been the sibling who didn’t care when Jack did something strange. Another glance at his face revealed still startlingly-focused eyes. “Can you hug me? Please?”

Klaus stood up and moved his chair next to Jack’s, wrapping his long arms around his younger brother. “Of course, Jack… anytime you want.” He reached up one hand to gently card through Jack’s hair, and Jack rested his chin on Klaus’s shoulder. 

For the first time in a long time, he felt… safe. The heaviness that had been there so long he barely even noticed it anymore was gone, and even if it was just going to be for a moment, he hadn’t felt so light in years. 

Because it wasn’t just the affection he so craved, the fact that Klaus had noticed that Jack was struggling made him feel warm and his chest ached in a pleasant way. It was also important to Jack that Klaus hadn’t pushed him to talk, that all he’d done was ask how he could support his brother. 

It was something that he hadn’t had since Ben died. Support, that is. Jack and Ben had been each other’s entire support system, which was more than the rest of them had had (except maybe Luther and Allison) because Ben and Jack had actually talked about their emotions and the things they were struggling with. With Ben gone, Jack had no one he felt safe to turn to. Still didn’t. Maybe never would. 

But right now, with Klaus’s arms around him and Reginald dead, everything felt okay. 

Almost without his permission, his wings sprang out. Klaus’s arms were pushed back but not too much, and he didn’t seem to mind too much. He just kept holding Jack close and now with the hand that wasn’t in his hair started to run his fingers through the dull and patchy feathers. 

Once, they’d been so beautiful. He’d spent more time keeping them clean and healthy than any of the rest of the siblings spent on any part of their appearance, but it helped that he didn’t need to sleep nearly as much as them. It wasn’t unusual to find a bright golden feather every once in a while. 

But his once-colorful wings had faded to a sort of dirty, faded yellowish. He hadn’t had enough time or cared enough to spend the time it took to clean them lately. All he’d needed to be able to do was fly. 

Maybe, with help, he could go back closer to who he was before.

-*-

Mom - killed - she killed Reginald? Did she? That wasn’t right, no, Mom wouldn’t kill him. Would she? Maybe so long alone, she’d finally come to her senses. She was so loyal to him. No. She wouldn’t kill him. She would kill him? She wouldn’t? Could she, even if she wanted to?

Jack rubbed the fabric of his sweatshirt between his fingers, trying to keep himself calm. The texture calmed him somehow, and as long as no one tried to stop him - he’d be okay. Even if he felt panic rising in his chest and holding all his limbs captive. He felt overwhelmed, tears pricking his eyes.

Because Jack didn’t care if Mom had killed Reginald. He was hurt that Luther would think one of them did it, but he wasn’t sad that Reginald was dead. If anyone deserved the right to kill him, it was Mom, who’d been held captive even more than the rest of them. 

The problem, then, was that Luther wanted to  _ shut Mom down.  _ And Jack understood why, he did. He just couldn’t see Mom being a danger to the rest of them. They were her  _ kids,  _ and she  _ loved  _ them. Diego was right, she felt things. Jack, too, had seen it. She had more of a soul than Reginald ever did.

And what was even worse was that Luther was - was putting it to a _vote._ Their mom’s life, and Luther was having them vote on whether or not they should kill her. Luther and Diego had almost gotten in a fight, too, and Jack had felt such powerful relief when Vanya stepped in that he was surprised he hadn’t fallen over.

Allison, of course, immediately was on Luther’s side. Vanya, when Diego let her  _ talk,  _ was on Diego’s. Klaus was getting really upset about - a van, or something? But he was on Diego’s - on  _ Mom’s  _ \- side. It didn’t matter that a bolt of pain seemed to electrocute Jack when Klaus mentioned Ben. Of course Ben was voting to help their mom, but Klaus couldn’t directly say that… none of them believed that Ben was still there. They hadn’t believed Jack, either, but that was fair. His memory, his mind, wasn’t exactly trustworthy. 

Klaus, though, now that Jack was looking at him more directly… he didn’t look good. He looked exhausted, his makeup barely even close to hiding the deep circles under his eyes. His hair was greasy and messy and he had some sort of hospital bracelet on his wrist. Hardly better than Jack had looked in the spaces between worlds, when he had the chance to clean dirt from his face but not much else.

Oh, they were all looking at him now. Why? 

The vote. 

“Uh - I, I, I - I, I agree with Diego.”

“So that’s… four, to two?” Diego said, dramatically holding up the corresponding numbers of fingers. In one hand he still clutched a knife.

_ Five to two,  _ Jack thought a tiny bit smugly. None of the rest of them knew that Ben, too, was on their side.

Allison and Luther pointed out that they should let Five have a vote, and then - they were all leaving. Jack, Diego, and Vanya were the last ones left, and Diego saw Mom and ended up going to her while Vanya followed. They talked quietly, Diego left the room. Jack heard the tell-tale rattle of pills. Vanya was upset.

But he was too exhausted to ask her what was wrong.

-*-

Jack just - he missed Ben so much. He hadn’t thought about it much, kept himself too busy for memories. Now, though, back home where he had so many memories of his best friend, dearest brother, closest confidante, it was so  _ painful.  _

All he wanted to do was go to the café that they used to visit, but he didn’t want to do it alone. He wanted to go with his brother.

It was too late for that. He’d go anyways.

He took a quick shower, changed into soft grey sweatpants and an oversized black sweatshirt that seemed to swallow his body whole, and put his shoes on. He’d walk, even though he could fly, because that’s what he and Ben would do way back when. ( _ when when when, before before before… his life was made of nothing but whens and befores.) _

His hair was soft, now, and he liked the texture. It was long enough that it was just starting to brush his shoulders. He liked it like this, actually, when it was smooth and clean. 

Plus it hid at least a few of the scars.

At this point he was - well, not quite  _ used _ to, but expecting - to look in the mirror and a face that was covered in marks that told the story of his life, if you knew enough to put together the pieces. Further down, a thin one stretched across his neck and a massive, thick one went from where his jaw met his throat on the right side to his 3rd rib on the left. At least the bigger one hid the smaller one, which was the one with the most pain associated with it. Well, not hid, but pulled attention away from.

His face - there was a wide, dark one that went from the edge of his mouth to the edge of his eye, one that spread across the bridge of his nose and out under his eyes, one that reached from just above his left ear and up, up, up to the top of his head. That one was hidden by the hair, but it was raised up enough that he could feel it with his fingers. A thousand smaller scars, too many to keep track of, littered his face. 

His hands, too; there was a thick one in the middle of his right palm; long, thin scars covering the backs of his hands; even more over his thin fingers. 

And that was just what was exposed by the sweatshirt. He tried not to think about the ones underneath. 

Lost in thought, Jack hadn’t realized how far he walked. He was almost there, now. He wondered if anyone who worked there would recognize him.

He wondered if a younger him would recognize himself. 

The bell above the door rang as he came in, a familiar and comforting sound. The sun was just starting to set and it cast an orangey glow over the café. 

Orange. Ben loved orange-flavoured cupcakes. He’d always gotten them from here. Whenever they came, it was the same. 

Jack walked up to the counter and a tired-looking person asked for his order. 

“Can I have, can I have, can I have, can -” Jack took a deep breath and started over. “Can I have an orange cupcake and some nougat, please?”

The person didn’t seem to care when they looked up and saw his scars, which in his opinion was a point in their favour. “Sure.” They handed him the items, he handed them the money, and he grabbed the treats and found an empty table to sit at. 

He ate slowly, savouring each bite. He hadn’t had either of these things since - a little before Ben died. Not the day before, he knew that, but he wasn’t sure when exactly. He should’ve tried to commit it to memory, should have memorized every second he got to spend with his brother. Because his faulty brain made him forget things, and some days (most days, now) he couldn’t remember what Ben’s voice had sounded like, his laugh, or the expressions he would make.

But sometimes, like right now, the memories were clear and crisp as winter air. The tastes brought back a hundred strings of memory, and each string led to a hundred more. In this moment, he felt as though Ben was with him.

He startled when he felt a touch on his hand, almost falling from his chair. A small, high voice asked, “What happened to your face?”

A child stood next to him, her long brown hair cascading past her shoulders. Her eyes were wide as she looked up at him curiously. 

So innocent. She shouldn’t be near him. He corrupted everything he touched, everything around him. Everyone who knew him would end up hurt. 

Just then, a woman rushed up behind the girl and gently grabbed her hand away from Jack’s. “I’m so sorry, she just wandered off!” She turned to the child and knelt down to be more on her level. “We don’t ask questions like that, okay, honey?”

Before the girl could say anything, Jack quietly said, “It’s okay. She’s just curious.” Addressing the child, he said, “I went looking for my brother, who I loved very much, because he ran away. But I went somewhere bad by accident, and some bad people hurt me. And even though that was a long time ago now, some of the cuts left marks that stayed.”

She reached her tiny hand to rest on the big scar that ran below his sweatshirt. “What’s this one from?” 

The mother was looking very uncomfortable now, but Jack was used to making people uncomfortable. “A very mean man named Michael was angry because I tried to keep him from hurting my friend, so he hurt me instead.”

“Did you find your brother?”

_ No. I failed him, left him alone wherever he was. Wherever he had been that changed him so deeply, I let him be there by himself.  _ “I didn’t find him. He came back home, though.”

“What’s your name? I’m Rebecca!” She smiled up at him, and he gave her a weak smile back. 

“My name is Jack. Pleased to meet you, Rebecca.” He held out one of his hands for a handshake, but she gave him a high five instead. 

“Ok, baby, we have to leave now, alright? Say bye to your friend!” the mother said nervously. Was he really so scary? 

Rebecca waved to him as they left, and Jack waved back. 

She’d asked him about something his family never had. Not once had any of them (except Ben, but he didn’t count, he was different) asked him about his scars. Probably out of the idea that he wouldn’t want to talk about them, which wasn’t completely wrong. But he wanted to tell his stories, have someone besides himself know what the marks so deeply etched in his skin  _ meant.  _

He wasn’t good enough to ask for those sorts of things, though. He knew he didn’t deserve such a kindness. That didn’t mean he didn’t want it.

-*-

After he got home, he just laid in bed for a while, watching the light fade through the window. It wasn’t long before he was lying in the dark. 

It wasn’t long after that that he heard gunshots. 

Gunshots in the house - someone was here - someone was going to hurt his family.  _ Or at least they were going to try.  _

Jack let his wings free, tearing through the thick fabric of his hoodie. His eyes glowed a bright gold and he let his father’s-not-his-father’s blade slip into his hand. 

The room was filled with shadows, the only light coming from his blazing eyes. Nobody hurt his family. Or at least, they didn’t hurt them and come out the other end alive. 

-*-

Hazel was having, quite honestly, a shit day. Sure, him and Agnes had had a  _ moment,  _ but then they’d been off again on their quest to find Number Five. Who apparently looked like a  _ kid.  _ And yeah, he knew that Number Five was a vicious assassin, but still. On top of everything else, his wrist still hurt. 

So he was eager to let off a little steam, shoot a couple people maybe, destroy a bit of the house at least. It wasn’t long before he and Cha-Cha stumbled across someone, some weird guy with a knife shirt (?) who had surprisingly good aim and was way too good at dodging bullets. Knives had nothing to guns, though, and it wouldn’t be long before he was just another nameless victim. 

Or so he thought. Because just seconds later, a teenager came storming down the stairs. The first thing Hazel noticed was his  _ eyes,  _ bright gold and actually, literally glowing. Then he saw the  _ wings.  _ Huge wings sprouted from his back, held up aggressively in a way that made Hazel want to bolt in terror. He held a three-sided knife in his left hand and a kitchen fork in his right. 

The kid looked about 16 or 17 and his face was covered in twisting scars. Somehow, he was scarier than anyone he’d met at the Commision. Something about him promised death and pain to anyone who went against him. 

But what could Hazel do but fight him?

Cha-Cha had seemed to have the same thought first and unleashed a hail of bullets on the winged boy. Though they hit him, he kept walking towards them slowly. After another few steps he held up his right hand (the fork was gone… maybe dropped) and then light pulsed from it and Cha-Cha was thrown backwards against the wall painfully. 

Hazel saw red. Obviously, somehow, bullets had no effect on the kid. He had seen an insane amount of weapons on the walls here, though, so he sprinted to the nearest one and grabbed a random knife (!) and charged the kid.

Later, he would realize that the knife was the same as the boy’s knife, If it hadn’t been, Hazel would have been killed right then and there. 

As it was, Hazel stabbed him in the chest. Blood poured out, but the boy didn’t collapse. He gritted his teeth and advanced on Hazel with feathers puffed and knife held threateningly. The fork was back, too, he noticed. 

_ Oh, God, oh fucking hell, _ he thought distantly. He raised the knife again and slashed at the boy’s throat, but he blocked it with his own knife. Hazel’s blood-covered weapon met the boy’s clean silver one. 

How was he not dead?

_ Holy fucking shit what the fuck.  _

His face was expressionless but his eyes… still the most captivating thing about him, they were more full of fury than he’d seen anyone’s before. Without a doubt the scariest teenager Hazel had ever met, and that  _ included  _ his little sister.

Blood was still falling from the wound in the boy’s chest, running down his legs and pooling on the floor below. Hazel quickly moved the knife back and went for the left arm (he was left-handed, it looked like?). It sank in far, Hazel could feel bone. Blood bubbled up around the silver, and when Hazel yanked it back it started to spill like crazy. 

This was a nightmare boy, something that would be whispered about at the Commision for ages.

If he survived, that is. Weapons clearly wouldn’t take the kid down, so he would have to knock him out. He wouldn’t stay down long, but at least long enough for them to grab one of the people in the house so that they could actually get  _ some  _ information. Cha-Cha was surely awake by now, if she’d been unconscious in the first place.

He whacked the boy over the head with the hilt of the knife, and he crumpled to the ground. All helpless like that, he really did look like just a kid. Hazel felt a little bad, he was clearly just trying to protect his home and family. 

But they were both doing what they had to. He took the two knives, spread out the boy’s hands, and stabbed one through each. It might keep him down for a bit longer, and Hazel and Cha-Cha needed all the time they could get. 

He ran over and helped her up, ducking the previously forgotten knife-man’s throwing knives. The knife guy didn’t chase them though, instead rushing to the kid. He was trying to talk but it seemed like he had a stutter. Maybe that was his little brother, his cousin, or his son. Hazel didn’t have time to feel guilty. 

Cha-Cha seemed a bit disoriented but she was the one to spot the guy in the towel. He had headphones in so he didn’t hear them coming. Poor dude was skinny as a twig. Hazel choked him until he went unconscious, then tied him up and hefted him over his shoulder. They needed to get out  _ now.  _

By some miracle they made it to their car, stuffed the guy in the trunk, and sped away before anyone came after them. 

Hazel’s hands shook as he drove.

-*-

Diego was desperately trying to make Jack wake up. He’d been knocked out for too long, it had been almost a minute. This hadn’t  _ ever  _ happened before. He couldn’t even turn his brother over because that fucking guy had stabbed knives through his  _ hands.  _ They were splayed against the ground, his skinny fingers twitching weakly. 

God. This was awful. Why hadn’t anyone else come down to help? If someone else had been there, this would never have happened. If Diego hadn’t been shot in the arm, he would’ve been able to help his second-smallest brother.

It was only a moment later, though, that Luther and Allison bolted down the stairs. They looked out of breath, so they must’ve at least been on their way. That was something. Didn’t help Jack though.

“What the hell happened?” Allison said, skidding to a stop and crouching down next to Diego and Jack. 

“Some creepy people in animal masks came in here and fucking attacked Jack. He’s alive, but he won’t w-wa-w-wake  _ up.”  _ Diego gestured helplessly to the winged boy, his hands shaking and the right one covered in blood. Oh, yeah. He was bleeding. 

“Jesus  _ christ,” _ Allison said, her eyes wide with panic. Luther sat on the ground and gently took Jack’s hand. Diego thought he was going to pull the knife out (bad) but instead he just took the knife out of the ground, leaving it in Jack’s hand. There was a slippery pool of blood underneath Jack. He didn’t need to lose any more. 

Luther did the same to the other side and picked Jack up carefully. 

“Woah, woah, woah, where are you taking him?” Diego stepped in front of Luther. 

Luther’s eyebrows drew together irritably. “The infirmary. We should have Mom-” He stopped, looked stricken. “We should bandage him up.”

Diego ignored Luther’s slip-up. “Yes, we should. Hurry up.”

By the time they got there, Luther’s heavy coat was stained dark. It looked like Jack had been stabbed in the chest and the arm as well as his hands. “We have to take his shirt off,” Allison said, grabbing scissors and cutting up the front, then the sleeves. She carefully lifted it off, and then glanced down at Jack’s exposed chest. Diego couldn’t see whatever it was she was looking at but she dropped the pieces of fabric and scissors and sat down on an uncomfortable looking chair, looking shell-shocked.

Luther was grabbing bandages and whatever other stuff he needed so he hadn’t seen any of that. Diego walked over to see what had so affected his sister and…

Oh shit. 

His chest was a roadmap of painful-looking scars, including the one that went down his neck which didn’t end until his  _ ribs.  _ What the hell? What had happened? 

That one had been there since - since he came back from looking for Five. 

It was a little late to be asking Jack what had happened. 

The worst, though, was his  _ arms.  _ Not an inch was left clear, they were covered in ruler-straight scars and scabs that went from his shoulders to about an inch above where his hands met his wrists. 

It was clearly done by Jack himself.

Diego felt a lump in his throat. How could he not have realized that Jack was struggling like this? 

Once again, he’d failed one of his brothers. 

How many times would it have to happen before he learned his lesson?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you might have noticed chapter count has been set! that's just an estimate not a guarantee. it's like the minimum number of chapters. so there may be more but not less :)  
> [my tumblr](https://crystalrainwing.tumblr.com/)  
> comments and kudos are as always appreciated!! <3


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